


Sayuri

by CouchAlmark



Category: Frame Arms Girl (Anime), Megami Device (Toyline), 武装神姫 | Busou Shinki (Anime)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Cosplay, F/F, F/M, Original Character(s), Other, Pseudo-Incest, Reincarnation, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Size Kink, Transformation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 52,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CouchAlmark/pseuds/CouchAlmark
Summary: An AI girl, a 1/10 scale companion devoted to your happiness and well-being.  They'll fight in battle games, they'll help around the house, and they'll do their best to fulfill your every command.  When you pass on, they'll be returned to their manufacturer and refurbished to go on to a new life with a new master.Unless you were to command them otherwise.Setting crossover between all the various mecha musume toylines.  No anime characters, but some characters share their appearances.





	1. Last Command

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin June 2017.
> 
> This one's as dark as it gets. Smut starts next chapter.

She'd made herself a blonde, of course: Master always loved blondes. Growing her hair out longer than her inner self had been as easy as adjusting the length of the filaments, and of course she could always spool some back in if she thought it was unwieldy. The biggest unnecessary expenses had been the height and the padding. She'd considered going for a short, flat-chested look to save on time and money, and if she had she could have been finished a few months ago. In the end, though, she knew what Master would have wanted. He'd left behind plenty of figures for inspiration.

She took her first steps out onto the patio. Everything was so different at this scale, so much smaller. This fencing had required her flight pack to scale: now her arms could rest comfortably on it. She hadn't been able to view the city from this angle since back when she could ride on Master's shoulder. She took a moment just to drink in the view. It had been a few years, and the shops along the street below had changed a bit from what was in her memory banks. Most of it was still there, though, including one of Master's favorite restaurants. She wondered if they'd noticed when she'd stopped coming to pick up meals for him.

"Hello there, miss!"

She let out a startled gasp at the voice coming from two doors down, slowly turning her head to look. It was an older woman, older than Master had been, looking her up and down. Suddenly she was thankful she'd put some clothes on before stepping outside.

"H-Hi!" she managed after an awkward pause. She hoped she hadn't forgotten anything. Would the woman notice the cameras hidden inside her eyes? Was her hair a natural enough color? She'd known this would happen - it was the whole point, after all - but actually doing it was giving her butterflies in her new stomach.

The woman gave her a reassuring smile. "Sorry to startle you, dear, but I haven't seen anyone come out that door in ages. Did that man who was here finally move out, or are you a relative?"

"I-I'm...his..." she stammered for a moment, thankful the voice box worked correctly. "His daughter." She wasn't entirely sure how plausible it was, but it was as close to the truth as she could say.

The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. "His daughter? I never took him for the type. You're here to take care of him, then?"

"Yes." she replied, gaining a bit more confidence. It was actually working! "I'll be living here too from now on."

"Oh? Well then, welcome. I do hope we'll be seeing more of you than your father. He only ever seems to send that cute little robot of his out to do things for him of late. Being a shut-in is terrible for your health, you know."

"I'll try, ma'am." The neighbor's words stung, but she did her best to keep a smile on. "I'll see you around."

She turned to leave, but the woman spoke once more.

"Might I ask your name, dear?"

"It's..." Again she hesitated. She'd thought long and hard about whether she wanted to change her name, to avoid the risk of being recognized. In the end, though, Master had given her that name. She wanted to keep it.

"Sayuri." she finished.

"Sayuri? He must have named his robot for you. How sweet." The woman gave Sayuri a warm smile, to which she responded with a more embarrassed look, though not for the reasons her neighbor suspected. "Well then, dearie, I'm Kaoru. If you ever need something, don't be afraid to knock."

"Yes ma'am." Sayuri responded, before slipping back inside. As soon as the door was shut, she shuddered in a mixture of excitement and relief.

"Master..." she said aloud as she looked up at the urn sitting on the mantle. It was the only new thing that sat up high, everything else either left where Master had left it or put on the floor where it was easier for her to reach before she'd finished building this body. Cremating Master without a proper oven had been a long, gruesome process, but it was the only way she'd had to hide the smell. "Master, I did it!"

The thought that he'd said it in jest had occurred to her at times, when he said that she handled so much of his daily life, and made so much extra income with her cam shows, that if something ever happened to him she should just keep going without him. But to Sayuri it was an order, and she could not disobey her Master.


	2. Self-Assessment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin June 2017.

Sayuri let out a groan as she slipped into the tub for the first time. She’d spent all day cleaning and rearranging the apartment, undoing the mess she’d made of it over the years. She’d kept the floor and lower shelves in good condition, but a lot of dust had built up everywhere higher than she’d normally flown. She’d also rearranged the shelves a bit, moving her favorites among Master’s books and figures closer to the front where she could reach them more easily. It was immensely satisfying to see the apartment clean again after so long, but the process had left her feeling as though she were caked with dust and grime. Taking the effort to make this body waterproof had been entirely worth it. She doubted she could swim, of course; even if she’d known how, she was a fair bit heavier than a real human. Still, being able to actually soak was an incredible sensation, on a whole different level from the holo-baths she’d used before.

Slowly her hands began to roam, exploring the new shape of her new body. She’d been through several over her many years with Master, as they’d worn out or become obsolete. All of them were quite pretty by human standards, as nearly all AI were, but like the majority of AI bodies they were all made with the appearance of young teenagers, meaning their figures had been quite petite. This body, though, this was different. It was older, seemingly in the prime of adulthood, and thus closer to her real age after her many years in Master’s service. It was also far more well-endowed, courtesy both of Master’s tastes and Sayuri’s desire to know what it felt like. She’d never worried much over her modest frames, but now that she’d tasted the sensations of her new breasts bobbing gently in the water, she was quickly starting to see the appeal.

There was more that had changed than just the size of her chest, though. The soft pink buds adorning each breast were new as well, something no AI that she knew of could boast without the aid of some rare and most definitely warranty-voiding modifications. Many older models, including her first few bodies, couldn’t even take their bodysuits off at all. She was fortunate enough that her current one, a relatively recent Factory Advance model, came with the option to strip so that she could wear whatever outfits her Master, and her camshow audience, desired. Still, even when she removed everything she could in that body, she was featureless underneath the stock clothing. This one, though, replicated those missing assets: the nipples on her chest, the replica stomach she could feel under her abs, the…

She gasped as her fingers reached that spot, the sensation sending a jolt through her circuits. It was almost like having her charger port touched, a pleasure that raced up the back of her spine from deep within her core. Real human girls weren’t really this sensitive, were they?

The first taste of pleasure spurring her on, she started to explore properly, devoting one hand wholly to the task. It was so soft and pliable down there, wet and just a little sticky, the lips clinging gently to her fingers as they moved in and out. Every motion made her whimper and moan with the alien sensation it brought. Even if it felt a bit like being charged, charging was a momentary burst of excitement when her power systems initially switched over to the flow from the plug, followed by a continuous satisfying flow that stayed steady no matter what she did. If the plug came loose and she had to stick it back in again, the exact same sensation would repeat. There was no variation to it. With this, though, she could feel the pleasure build on itself each time she moved her fingers, and slowly begin to taper off whenever she paused. Even after just a few seconds of touching it was already a far stronger sensation than the steady flow of her charger, and it was rapidly eclipsing the burst as well. Whether all human girls felt like this or it was just this intense because she was unaccustomed to it, she couldn’t say, but if it was the latter then part of her hoped she never got used to it.

Her other hand clutched at her chest, groping herself the way she’d seen the girls in Master’s videos do it. Her breasts were another whole new world of sensation, though this time it was only a difference of degree. Even her inner self felt some pleasure when she touched herself there, even if it couldn’t build to any kind of release, but she’d never had more than enough to simply rub and sometimes squeeze. These breasts were made for kneading, for grabbing big handfuls and feeling them jiggle under her grip. The nipples, though, those were entirely new and felt more sensitive than the rest of her breasts combined. Just rubbing them with her palm was making her let out some of the most embarrassing sounds she’d ever heard herself make, sounds she’d only ever heard in Master’s videos.

It was just too much. The pleasure just kept building, and as it did she felt as though there was a spring tightening inside her, harder and harder, liable to snap at any moment. When it did, the sense of release that rocked her body completely outshone anything her charger had ever made her feel. She cried out, long and hard, as her nether lips spasmed around her fingers and drenched them in much more than just water. Finally she collapsed back against the side of the bath, her air intakes forcing her to draw in heavier breaths so they could synthesize fresh lubricant. Steadily her breathing began to return to normal as the afterglow passed, leaving her feeling a bit amazed at her body’s thoroughness. She couldn’t imagine human girls really indulged in that kind of sensation every time.

Maybe another round, she thought, just to be sure.


	3. Identity Reforged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin July 2017.

The next morning, she went outside properly for the first time. Human clothes were surprisingly expensive: most of what she’d needed to save up for was the material costs of her body, but buying a whole new wardrobe had taken more than she’d expected. Fortunately, her career meant she was no stranger to wearing them; if anything, the casualwear she’d donned was much more comfortable than her typical costumes and dresses. She could get used to wearing more normal outfits.

There were a number of places she wanted to stop, but one was much more important than the rest. Across the river and under the bridge lay an access door to the city’s underground. It was one of many, but this particular one had its lock carefully sabotaged so that with the right motion, she could pop it open and make her way into the tunnel beyond. Sayuri felt a bit of trepidation at the dimly lit passages, but not as much as she had the first time she’d been here.

It was a short walk through the maintenance tunnels, but a winding one. A human who didn’t know the tunnels by heart would have had a difficult time even finding the particular storage room door that she stopped at. Even if they had, the lock didn’t fit any key that a human possessed. Looking around to double-check that she was out of sight to anyone who might somehow pass by, she allowed herself to open up.

Sayuri’s eyes closed, and her face went slack, returning to a neutral expression. A soft hiss came from her chest as the synthskin allowed itself to part, revealing a formerly-invisible triangle etched into her collar. The plate pulled upward and slid back to expose the charging cradle nestled within her chest. Tucked into the cradle was a single passenger, who opened her eyes just as the outer shell had closed hers.

Sayuri winced a bit as she roused, unplugging the cables slotted into her various ports. She was a far cry from the outer shell in many ways: rather than a blonde, her hair was a very light shade of brown, almost like clay. Her torso was covered in a red and white bodysuit that terminated at her thighs and shoulders, accompanied by long black gloves and stockings. It had only been a day, but it already felt a bit strange to be back in this body rather than the human-size shell. Still, it wasn’t the first time she had changed bodies. She reached into the storage compartments on either side of her, retrieving her wingpack and staff from their storage slots. Neither were standard with her model, and Master was never one to take her to battles, but she’d convinced him to let her purchase the wings after she’d started missing the ability to fly that some of her previous bodies had possessed. As for the staff, it was hard to pass up a weapon that had so many functions both in combat and around the house.

Her equipment restored to its proper place, she jumped off from her perch on her outer shell’s chest and hovered down to the base of the door. At this size it was much easier to see the tiny slit at eye level and the seams cut into the plate, forming the outline of a smaller door with no knob or keyhole cut into the human-size one. She knocked, waited a few moments, and spoke the password she’d been given.

“Blaze Tempest Burst.”

The small door let out a quiet beep and swung inward in response. Standing behind it was another AI girl like herself. This one was a Hresvelgr, her teal hair worn a bit longer than the norm for the line. Her usual swimsuit bodysuit had been traded in for a set of makeshift overalls, stained black with oil and grease. The Hresvelgr gave a welcoming grin and a wave hello.

“Hey, Sayuri. Been a while. You done yet~?”

Sayuri gave a more demure smile back. “Good to see you again, Haruko. And...yeah, I did it.”

Haruko’s eyes lit up brighter, if such a thing was even possible for one of her line. “Well c’mon, then, don’t block the door! Let me see!”

Sayuri stepped aside obediently before Haruko could try to muscle past her, allowing the Hresvelgr to come out and look up at her outer shell. Haruko whistled as she looked it over from top to bottom, eyes lingering on the shell’s chest and hips for just a bit longer than necessary. When she returned her attention to Sayuri herself, it was with a playful smirk. “What, jealous?” She folded her arms under her chest for emphasis, although if anything Sayuri’s shell was noticeably bigger.

Sayuri flushed at the accusation. “Master had his preferences...”

“Hah~” Haruko let some of the playfulness fade to sympathy. Every AI girl understood the need to fulfill their master’s wishes, ones in their position most of all. “Alright, well, let’s get to it, then, shall we? You’ll only get one shot at this, better make sure we do it right. Get back in there while I get the door.”

“Okay.” Sayuri flew back up to her shell’s open cockpit as Haruko went back into the storage room and closed the small door. By the time she was done plugging all of the connector cables back in, Haruko had started heaving open the human-size door. It wasn’t the first time that Sayuri had seen her do it, but it never failed to impress her just how strong Hresvelgr were.

The room beyond the door had originally been a storage room, at least: in its current condition it looked more like a hacker’s basement. Several cobbled-together computers sat along one wall, hooked up to AI-scale interfaces, while the other was taken up with fabricators and maintenance bays. About a dozen different Mr. Chargers marched back and forth across the floor, carrying tools and slabs of metal. Sayuri actually didn’t have a Mr. Charger of her own: she’d always preferred Frontline’s charging cradles even in her current Factory Advance body, using the cradle’s backup manual plug whenever she needed the stress relief that wireless charging couldn’t provide. Still, she had to admit the boxy robots were useful, even if their programming was a bit too simple to make for good conversation.

“Right, now, let’s take care of your pictures first.” Haruko called from her position on the floor. “Boys! Camera!”

Haruko directed Sayuri through the process of getting photos, fingerprints, a signature, everything she would need to establish her identity as Master’s daughter by an estranged European mother. The forged documents needed to be comprehensive, even covering educational and medical records. She would have to avoid situations where her blood or other fluids might be tested - her body wasn’t that comprehensive in replicating a human - but everything else was in place in what Sayuri found to be a remarkably short time.

“I thought this was your first time doing this?” she asked as she brushed some aging solvent across the freshly-printed documents.

Haruko shrugged. “Yeah, but I got bored and started early. Best not to break into too many places at once anyway.” She stood back and watched Sayuri at work for a bit, admiring her body once more. “Damn, you handle those pretty well, don’t you?”

“What?” Sayuri followed Haruko’s gaze, flushed, and crossed an arm over her chest. “You perv!”

“Ahahaha~!” Haruko flashed Sayuri a cheeky grin. “But no, seriously. You look like you handle that body pretty naturally. What’s it feel like?”

“It’s...everything feels smaller, I guess.” Sayuri replied after a moment. “I’m starting to like it.”

“Well, if this works out, I think I’ll try it next.” Haruko took hold of the solvent-covered paper in front of Sayuri and dragged it off to the drying stack. “Would be nice to get some fresh air.”

“I’ve told you before,” Sayuri said as she started in on the next paper, “you’re always welcome at my place. You could live there too if you wanted; it gets lonely.”

“What, pretend you’re my master?” Haruko sat down next to Sayuri, one of her Mr. Chargers obediently forming a chair for her. “No thanks. You know I’ve only got one.”

Sayuri nodded in understanding. As advanced and capable of growth as AI were, at their core they were made to serve their masters. Their master was the most important person in their life, and it took severe effort to break that bond. If their master was abusive, or left them, they were supposed to be returned to the factory they came from so that they could be wiped of memories and start fresh with a new master. The ones who lived down here, like Haruko, were the ones who had resisted that fate and fled underground to avoid losing their memories of the masters they still loved. Most cities had at least one such shantytown, with populations in the dozens or even hundreds. Despite the bond’s central importance, an AI could live without a master, but it was a stressful experience. Strong-willed personalities like Haruko’s had the most success at keeping their programming stable, but less decisive AI suffered for the absence. Many took to using modified energy packs to alleviate the stress, though those came with their own problems. Sayuri felt like she was one of the stable ones, even though she didn’t think she was as strong as Haruko; perhaps Master’s order had helped.

“I know,” Sayuri said after a moment. “Sorry to bring it up.”

“Nah, I appreciate the offer.” Haruko said, waving her off. “I just don’t want to do it if you’re pretending to be a human and I’m not. Let’s see if this works out before we go getting ahead of ourselves, alright?”

“Okay.” Sayuri returned her attention to the growing pile of papers. Soon enough she’d be testing them for real.


	4. Streaming Debut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin July 2017.

By the time Sayuri was done with her other errands, she’d finished being processed as Master’s sole heir. She’d asked Haruko to wait a few weeks to mark him legally deceased, to ease the transition with the neighbors and landlord from her apparent moving in. She’d made sure to introduce herself to all of them, most of whom were surprised there was anyone at all living in that apartment before her. The ones that she’d met before in her daily errands recognized her name, but they were all easily convinced that Master had simply named his robot for his formerly-absent daughter. Eventually she’d fully make the transition to living there in his place. After that, she wasn’t yet sure what she’d do beyond simply carrying on with her daily life as before, as she had to. She wanted to help the other AIs living underground, but wasn’t sure where to begin with such a task.

For now, though, Master’s order beckoned her to another sort of task. There was another group of people who had to be reintroduced to her. She’d spent quite a bit of time contemplating if she wanted to keep doing her shows exactly as before, or start using her new look, but the bath had convinced her. She set up her webcam and move to a kneeling position on the futon.

“Hey, everyone!” Sayuri waved to her audience as they began to pour into the chat. Master had originally had her start doing these shows for fun, to see if she could pass as a human. She’d soon begun to enjoy wearing the different costume armors and performing for an audience. The extra pay was nice too for supplementing Master’s investments, which had allowed Sayuri to build her new shell much more quickly than it might have otherwise taken. Normally she would be wearing something more elaborate, but all of her costumes were for her inner self. It didn’t matter much anyway, since this time the focus was going to be on her body, so she stuck to a simple shirt and jeans.

The responses from the chat were immediate and astounded. Sayuri sat back with legs crossed, smiling brightly at the webcam.

“I know it’s been a little while. I told you last time that you guys had been so generous that I was thinking about getting some body work done. What do you think?”

Most of the responses that flooded the chat window were focused on her chest, followed closely by her new blonde hair. Sayuri leaned forward just a bit to give them a better angle, and the pace of the commentary increased.

“Ahaha...you all really have a preference, huh?” Sayuri’s subroutines sorted through the chat responses, tossing out the useless chaff and catcalls from her memory and picking a few choice questions for her core consciousness to answer.

“Yeah, they’re the newest tech. Yeah, they feel great. Yeah, I...kinda didn’t think about how all my costumes won’t fit anymore. No, I’m not wearing them anyway!” Sayuri huffed, folding her arms under her chest. “I’m gonna need a new wardrobe. Tell you what, though: the top three donors get to pick what costumes I model first. And...” She felt her circuits firing in excitement as she smiled at her audience. “I think you’re gonna like these stretch goals.”

She put up the tracker, and at once the donations started pouring in. The shifting list of the top three donors marked the bottom of the screen, a few competing with escalating bids for those top spots while the majority simply chipped in a few yen in the hopes that the combined total would reach what she’d marked as goals, or would simply watch for free and take what they could get. In prior shows she couldn’t show off anything sexual, given her need to hide her lack of equipment, so normally the goals would have her do some voicework or act out a particular scene for the viewers using the costumes she was showing off. This time, though, she’d put up goals that would let them see exactly what the new her offered. She’d debated for a long time about whether she wanted to take this step, but Master would have had her do it if she’d had the ability at the time.

The counter ticked past the first goal line, and her shirt came off, revealing the swimsuit top underneath. One advantage her artificial body had over a real human was that she didn’t need any kind of supporting undergarment, but she didn’t want them getting too far too easily. She arched her back a bit to help emphasize her breasts underneath the triangles of red fabric, embroidered in white as a nod to her inner self’s bodysuit.

“Like I was saying, they feel really nice.” Sayuri said to the camera as commentary filled the chat once more. “I didn’t realize my chest would be so much more sensitive this way.” She idly posed and stretched, letting them see the way her breasts quaked just a bit with every little motion, giving them a good view of her silky smooth midriff. She noticed her viewership numbers were starting to creep upwards.

The second goal, and she unbuttoned her jeans, sliding them down to her ankles with deliberate slowness so that each inch of her perfectly slender thighs and calves that came into view was a show in its own right. She was clad only in the swimsuit now, the red and white making a stark contrast with her lengthy blonde hair.

“Yeah, I overhauled things back here too.” she admitted as she turned her lower body to the side, letting the audience see the new curvature of her hips and rear end. She’d balanced her considerable chest with flared hips and an amount of bubble to her backside that helped give her an hourglass look, as Master had preferred, and it seemed as her audience did as well. At their requests she let a finger roam over her side, letting them see where the firm muscle of her thigh transitioned into the pleasant softness of her ass.

She’d made the first two goals easy, to whet their appetite. The third goal was considerably further, but it came faster, driven by the audience’s excitement at what it meant. Sayuri’s hands reached behind her back, untying the knot holding her bikini top in place. She paused, holding onto the ropes in her fingers while favoring the camera with a blushing smile.

“Everyone watching? I don’t want anyone to miss out.”

She let go. The swimsuit fell away, and Sayuri’s audience at last saw her breasts for the first time. She knew she’d just passed another point of no return, a thought that set her circuits ablaze.

“How big are they? 85E.” Sayuri continued to blush at the question, feigning more nervousness than she felt. She’d picked out one of Master’s favorite characters for reference when crafting her shell. She shifted from side to side a bit, letting her breasts jiggle for the camera. The nanofoam material was nearly perfect at replicating the bounciness of human flesh, or any other level of softness she desired. At the audience’s coaxing she let a hand idly roam over her chest, showcasing the curvature and the way her fingertips sank just a bit into the supple surface. She took her time in bringing her hand to her nipples, recalling their incredible sensitivity. They still felt every bit as good when she rubbed and teased at them this time, and with an audience watching, she made no effort to stifle her moans.

“Ah! Oh, gods, I told you they were sensitive, guys!” Sayuri’s legs were spread, giving the audience a clear view of the remaining piece of her swimsuit, which was gradually growing damp as her pleasure mounted. Those watching on the highest resolution could even glimpse a few droplets of nectar making their way out onto the edge of her thigh and the futon beneath her. They could even start to see the outline of her crease as the scrap of cloth began to hug it tighter, teasing them with the view that was just one more goal away.

Steadily the numbers ticked upward as Sayuri played with her breasts for the camera, following her audience’s requests about what to do. She had to take a moment to thank the one who taught her to lift her breast and lick at her nipple, the sensation of her wet tongue sweeping around the sensitive nub almost enough to bring her release all on its own when she did it for the first time. It wasn’t just the physical act, but something about doing such things in front of her audience, knowing what they were doing to the sight of her body, that filled her with a thrill unlike any she’d felt before. She wanted to show them more, wanted them to teach her more. She wanted them to hit that last goal and let her bare everything to them. She’d made that goal a truly difficult one, though, and the timer ran out well before the crowd could reach it.

“Mmm, and that’s time.” Sayuri said as the clock hit zero and the donation box locked. She sat back on her hands, breasts still quaking just a bit, and fixed her audience with a playful smile. “We’ve got our winners. The three of you can message me with your costume choices for next time. As for the rest of you, tell your friends to join in next time. Maybe you’ll make it all the way, hm?”

Sayuri let the audience have just a little bit longer with the sight of her topless and smiling at them before signing off. The moment the webcam shut off, she was flat on her back and quivering with excitement at what she’d done. She’d never realized she possessed such exhibitionistic cravings before now. Was it the nature of her shell as an escort, or had she always had such potential lurking inside her? Whatever the reason, she couldn’t wait for her next show. Sayuri let out a giddy sigh, looking up at the ceiling.

“Master...this is what you would have wanted, right?” She closed her eyes, smiling contentedly. “I promise, I’ll carry on.”

One of the viewers that had watched the show let out a sigh of her own, as Haruko licked absently at one of the many charging cables wrapped around and plugged into her body.

“That girl; she’s something, alright.” Haruko glanced idly over at one of her other monitors, craning her neck a bit to look past the Mr. Chargers surrounding her. “Wonder if I should tell her...eh, nah, it’ll be fine. C’mon, boys, step up the voltage a bit. I ain’t got all night.”

She left the blinking image of Sayuri’s family registry be, and returned her attention to her own pleasures. Just because she couldn’t do all that Sayuri’s new shell could didn’t mean she couldn't have some fun. There were plenty of other ways of relieving stress, especially if you had a harem.


	5. Risks and Responsibilities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin August 2017.

It had been two months now since Sayuri had started living as a human, and thus far things were going perfectly. She’d made the transition from taking care of her ailing father to moving in fully as his replacement resident, as far as the apartment building’s other tenants were concerned. She’d made an effort to be more outgoing than Master had been, getting to know everyone in the building at least enough to recognize them on sight. Many of her days were spent going out and exploring the world from her new perspective, as the feeling of being a giant slowly faded and she grew comfortable with being at human size. Her nights she would often spend online, exploring the communities that Master had lurked in.

Once a week, every Saturday night, she would do a camshow for her steadily swelling audience. They still hadn’t hit that big stretch goal, but over time they were getting closer and closer as more people watched her perform for them. Magical girl costumes were still the most popular requests by far, as they had been before she’d made the switch: she could change her hair to match even the exotic styles and colors perfectly, though of course her audience didn’t know that, and copying their voices was a simple matter. Commissioning high-quality outfits was a bit expensive, especially compared to what she was used to paying, but the profits from the shows covered the costs nicely with room to spare. It wasn’t like she had to pay for much else besides the apartment, and Master had left her with an inheritance to manage large enough that she was well into the black each month. Slowly but surely, she’d made Master’s life into her own.

Thus it was a surprise the late spring day that Sayuri heard Master’s phone ring. He’d only ever used it for outgoing calls, usually to order food, and she hadn’t had much need for it yet either.

“Hello?”

“This is the residence of Sayuri Kourei?” a male voice asked.

“Yes, that’s me…”

“I regret to inform you that your aunt and uncle passed away last night.”

“Ah?” Sayuri’s response was one of genuine surprise, but not for the reasons the man on the phone might have thought: she didn’t even know Master had any siblings.

“As their eldest living next of kin, you are first in line for custody of their daughter...”

Again Sayuri let out a sound of surprise that the man on the phone seemed to misinterpret.

“I understand this must come as a shock to you, ma’am. Your cousin is due to be released from the hospital this evening. An escort will be provided to bring her to your residence and handle the papers if you accept custody.”

Sayuri hesitated. She’d had no idea this was even a possibility, and taking care of a human was a major responsibility, if one she was familiar with. Could she even manage to keep her secret around someone living in the same house as her? Part of her wanted to say no, to avoid the risk and responsibility. Another part reminded her of the suffering this girl would be going through, so similar to how she’d suffered from Master’s loss. A third reminded her that this was Master’s last living relative, and that was enough.

“I’ll do it.”

“Very well. Please be ready to greet Ayane when she arrives. Thank you for your time.”

The agent hung up a moment later, leaving Sayuri to collect her thoughts and process what she’d just agreed to. The next few hours seemed like a blur, as she set about doing what she could to prepare for a human guest. She needed to buy food for the first time since she’d started living on her own, as well as set up another futon. She wanted to go talk to Haruko, but didn’t have the time.

Soon enough, much sooner than Sayuri felt like it ought, the knock at the door came. Waiting behind it was a tall, suited man accompanied by a slender girl who looked to be about eighteen, her raven hair dyed red at its tips. She looked tired, was Sayuri’s first thought upon seeing her, tired and angry.

“I’ll need you to sign here, please.” the agent said as he held out a clipboard and pen. Sayuri’s eyes scanned over the pages, leaving them to her subroutines to verify before she signed. The moment she was done, the agent took back the clipboard.

“Thank you for your cooperation. Your aunt and uncle’s estate will be in touch.” The agent soon enough departed, leaving the two girls alone.

“...So.” Ayane spoke up after an awkward pause. “You’re supposed to be my cousin? How come I’ve never heard of you?”

“Ma - my...dad never really talked about his family.” Sayuri replied, doing her best to pass off the momentary slip into reflex as a stutter. “I think they had a falling out. I didn’t know I had a cousin either.”

“What happened to your dad?”

“He...died a few weeks ago. Heart attack.” Sayuri said. That was the official record, thanks to Haruko; the cause was real, the date was just off by about a year. Either way, the news seemed to deflate the resentment that had been simmering in Ayane’s eyes.

“Oh. I didn’t...that sucks.” Ayane looked to one side, avoiding Sayuri’s gaze. “All of this sucks.”

“...Yeah.” was all Sayuri could offer. “Come on in.”

Ayane nodded wordlessly, and Sayuri escorted her into the apartment to begin the process of showing her around, not that there was much to show. It was a two-bedroom apartment, mostly because Master had wanted the extra space for his cabinets, with a central bar kitchen-slash-living room, one bathroom, the two bedrooms, and not much else. Ayane cocked an eyebrow at some of the contents of the cabinets that lined the walls, particularly the more provocative figures.

“You’re into this kind of stuff?”

Sayuri tapped her fingers together in embarrassment. “A little…” She had in fact picked up many of Master’s tastes over the years by osmosis. She’d rearranged the contents of the cabinets to push some of the most crass figures towards the back or more out of sight and bring her favorites towards the front, but there was still quite a lot of cheesecake on display. It didn’t hurt that Sayuri was entirely capable of cosplaying many of these girls, a fact that Ayane seemed to finally notice as her attention wandered from the statues to Sayuri’s chest. She didn’t say anything, but Sayuri could feel the envy in her cousin’s gaze.

“Well, ah, let’s show you to your room…!” Sayuri said quickly, before the moment could get any more awkward.

“Right…” A little of the initial sourness was back in Ayane’s tone now, though perhaps for different reasons than before. Sayuri would have to figure out how to deal with that later, though, as for the moment she had to take care of just getting her new guest settled in. 

As Sayuri had suspected she might, Ayane passed out the moment her head hit the futon, before she could even unpack her suitcase or undress. Sayuri sighed quietly to herself as she looked over her sleeping cousin, whose arrival had just made things far more complicated. It wasn’t the first time she’d been a human’s caretaker, though, and already she felt the old instincts returning as she drew the bedsheets up over Ayane’s body to tuck her in.

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered, both to Ayane and to herself. “I’ll make this work.”


	6. Stress Relief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin August 2017.

Ayane had first noticed something was up the day after her arrival, when a package arrived that Sayuri was suspiciously anxious to get into the privacy of her room and out of sight. She’d caught enough of a look at the label to get a name, and looked it up later to find that the package was from a costume designer who did commissions.

The second warning sign was that her cousin didn’t seem to have a job. A day or two taken off work to take care of greeting her and settling their affairs would have been one thing, but it had been five days now and Sayuri showed no signs of having anywhere else to be but home. Ayane didn’t either, but she’d just graduated high school and it was summer. What was Sayuri’s excuse? Maybe she was rich enough that she didn’t need to work, but if so, why was she living in an apartment like this?

Third, of course, there was Sayuri’s body. It was too perfect to be natural; even beyond the fact that she didn’t have any facial blemishes of any kind, you didn’t get tits and an ass like that without either winning the genetic lottery or some serious cosmetic surgery. Her legs were perfectly groomed despite not owning a razor; hell, Ayane wasn’t sure she’d seen her cousin use the bathroom for _anything_ besides washing. It was like she was a living anime character, or one of those fapbait statues all over the apartment. Not that Ayane was jealous, of course.

All of that gave her plenty of reason to suspect something was up, but it was the too-thin walls of the apartment that led to the moment of discovery. It was the first Saturday night since her arrival, and Ayane was trying to get some sleep when she heard Sayuri’s muffled voice coming from her bedroom. It was just loud enough that Ayane had trouble making out the words, but it sounded like she was reciting a speech. She considered ignoring it and rolling over, but with everything else she’d seen, curiosity took hold. She hauled herself out of bed and made her way outside as quietly as she could manage.

Sayuri’s door was closed, but not locked, so Ayane took her time in easing it open to avoid making noise. Before it was even open she could hear the speech continuing, now interspersed with groaning. Ayane peeked in through the crack in the door, giving her a clear view of Sayuri dressed in a frilly pink costume and masturbating for her webcam. The top half of the costume was open, with one of Sayuri’s hands fondling those oversized tits of hers. They were even bigger than she’d realized, Ayane thought, now that she was seeing them out in the open. Sayuri’s other hand was wrapped around a magic staff that she had stuffed into the waistband of her costume, grinding the pommel of it back and forth against her pussy.

Her cousin was a camgirl. It didn’t explain everything, but it explained a hell of a lot. How often did she do this? Once a week? More? So shocked was Ayane by the sight of the show that Sayuri was unknowingly providing (to her, at least) that she hardly noticed her hand drifting down towards the waistband of her pajamas. She caught herself just in time, sucking in a breath she hoped Sayuri and the webcam audience didn’t hear over her own moans. She gritted her teeth, chastising herself over getting turned on by this. Another part of her complained that it had been the worst week of her life and she hadn’t gotten any stress relief in days. She needed some release and she needed it bad.

 _Fine_ , she decided as her inhibitions and libido quarreled, _but not here_. She retreated from Sayuri’s room, careful to close the door just as quietly as she had opened it, and made her way to the bathroom. She needed a hot shower, both to mask any potential sounds and because she would need the nozzle for what she was about to do.

Ayane paused as she stripped down to look herself over in the bathroom mirror. She was lean and well-toned thanks to high school gymnastics, with a firm and tight ass that she could be proud of. Her chest, not so much; she wasn’t totally flat, but at best she was on the low side of average for a Japanese girl her age. She was normally able to push aside any feelings of inadequacy, but living with Sayuri and her ridiculous abundance of cleavage had been making it considerably more difficult for the past few days.

She spent several minutes making sure she was as cleaned out as possible before getting into the shower. The hot water hitting her skin made her let out a groan of relief all on its own, and she let it drench her from head to toe, suffusing her with its warmth and turning the air around her soothingly steamy. Ayane’s hand trembled just a bit as she reached for the nozzle and plucked it from its holster, bringing it down over her shoulder as her free hand grasped her backside to spread her tight buns apart. The hot water rushing down between her cheeks prompted another, lower groan as her tailhole twitched at the stimulation.

Ayane held the nozzle in place as long as she dared before pulling it away and returning it to its holster. Next came the bottle of lotion on the shower shelf. It wasn’t ideal for the task at hand, but it would do in a pinch. She opened the cap and dipped her middle finger inside, coating it in a thick layer of the milk-white gel. Now suitably cleaned and moistened, her hand went for its long-awaited destination, and she let out a proper moan as her fingertip slipped into her waiting backdoor. Anal was a real pain to prepare for, but it was so worth it. She’d always had a sensitive rim, and a one-night stand whose fingers had roamed a bit too far had grown it into a full-blown fetish. She only wished it was easier to do without so much work involved in keeping it clean.

“Nngh…” Her pussy ached to find release, but she resisted the urge to go wild on herself. Instead she took her time, teasing her rim by popping her fingertip in and out, in and out in a steady rhythm. Each time was met with a bit less resistance as her anus loosened up, making it easier when she finally slid her finger in all the way down to the base. Ayane groaned and leaned against the shower wall, feeling her tailhole clench and squeeze around her finger as it tried to expel the intruder. The massaging sensation was heavenly, each twitch of her finger eliciting a fresh wave of squeezing from her ass.

She kept it at that for a bit, doing her best to hold in her groans; even with the water running, she didn’t want to risk Sayuri hearing what she was doing. Eventually her needs became more insistent, and she pushed deeper still, palm pressed flat against her ass to give her just that little bit of extra distance as her finger probed for its target. It took a little exploration, but there was no missing the sensation when she felt her fingertip brush the backside of her cervix through her anal walls.

“Aahnngh~!” Ayane stifled a yelp, gritting her teeth. Now that she’d found the spot, she could work her fingertip back and forth across it, each brush sending a jolt up her spine. Her hips quivered, prompting her to make her way down to her knees before she could slip and fall. She found herself bent over with her ass in the air, digging deep into her backdoor while her free hand came around in front to squeeze at her chest. She felt its modesty more intensely than ever, her envy burning almost as hot as her lust; try as she might, she couldn’t drive the image of Sayuri masturbating just next door from her mind, enjoying those massive cowtits of hers, licking and sucking on them while her audience cheered her on and threw money at her in the hopes of seeing her do even dirtier things with them. She really, _really_ didn’t want to get off while thinking about her cousin.

Unfortunately, Ayane’s imagination and her sex drive had other plans. She shuddered and did her best to stifle the moans that came with her pussy convulsing in orgasm, driven there almost purely by the stimulation coming from her ass. Each twitch made her legs quiver and her abs tense, her tailhole clenching around her finger over and over. The effort of holding her cries in left her breathing heavily for a minute or so; she didn’t bother trying to get up until all of the afterglow had passed. Even then, she felt just a little shaky as she got to her feet, her pussy still quietly humming in release and relief. She took hold of the nozzle again to rinse herself off, not wanting to leave any lotion behind.

Eventually she made her way back to her bedroom, checking to see if she’d been noticed. Sayuri’s bedroom lights were still on, and it sounded like her show was still continuing. Not enthralled with the idea of a repeat peepshow, Ayane made her way to bed and threw a sheet over her head to drown out the sound as best she could. Soon enough sleep came to her, even as a small part of her nagged her about the lingering threads in her cousin’s odd behavior. Even with tonight's revelations, it still didn’t all quite add up, but that would be a discovery for another day.


	7. Secret-Keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin September 2017.

Ayane wasn’t sure what possessed her to follow her cousin the first time that Sayuri went out on private business. Maybe it was the camgirl thing, prompting curiosity at what else she might be doing for a living. More likely, though, it was that lingering nagging feeling that even knowing about her career, there was still something off about Sayuri. Something about her felt not quite human.

Sayuri’s path took her halfway across the city, but not towards the seedier districts like Ayane had been guessing. She’d made sure to don a hat and sunglasses before trailing her cousin, whose blonde hair made her easy to track from a safe distance. Sayuri for her part didn’t seem concerned with the possibility of being followed, striding down the sidewalks with a purposeful gait.

Her path took her down to the riverside, and it was here that Sayuri finally became a bit more cautious. Ayane had to duck out of sight whenever Sayuri looked over her shoulder, making sure she thought she was alone in going down the steps that led underneath one of the bridges spanning the river. Again Ayane’s imagination began to speculate, but before she could get too carried away, Sayuri popped open the access door under the bridge and slipped out of sight. Ayane hurried down the stairs herself and inspected the door. It looked like it should be locked, but she hadn’t seen Sayuri use a key. She jiggled the handle a bit, soon finding the right motion to pop the lock and continue the chase.

The maintenance tunnels were poorly lit, and Sayuri had a considerable head start now, forcing Ayane to scramble to catch up before she could lose the trail. On the plus side, the many corners and tight corridors made it a cinch to stay out of sight. The trick now was in masking the sounds of her footsteps. Sayuri’s own steps were loud, echoing down the hallways with every tap of her shoes against the concrete and steel floors, so Ayane soon enough found the rhythm to hide her much more careful steps within her cousin’s.

She wasn’t sure how far down they were when Sayuri’s walk finally came to an end in front of a storage room door. Ayane watched from around a corner as Sayuri went quiet, seeming to stop and just stand there rather than do anything that she could tell from her viewing angle. After a few moments, two voices started speaking.

“Haruko!” she heard Sayuri say with an angry huff. Something was wrong, though: the voice was just like Sayuri’s, but it was coming from somewhere near the ground. She couldn’t see Sayuri’s face from this angle, but she was pretty damn sure she wasn’t crouching. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a cousin?”

“You didn’t ask.” said the other voice. That must have been Haruko, Ayane assumed. It too came from near the ground. “I kind of figured you knew about any extended family.”

“That’s...ugh.” Sayuri’s voice paused briefly. “Master never liked to talk about his family. It sounds like they didn’t talk about him much either.” Wait, “master”?

Suddenly it clicked. The too-perfect body, the lack of a job: forget being a camgirl, her cousin was a robot.

“Well, what do you want to do about it?” Haruko asked. “You agreed to take her in. What, do you not like her?”

“I like her, but what would happen if she found out? Would she tell people? I’d have to run away.”

“You could move down here.” Haruko replied. “It’s not so...well, yeah, alright, it kinda sucks.”

“It’s not just that.” Sayuri said, her voice audibly shaky even from Ayane’s position. “Ayane, she’s...she’s all I have left of Master’s family. I don’t want her to hate me.”

The statement struck a chord somewhere deep in Ayane. It was true: she was the last of her family, or she’d thought she was, when she first heard the news that had destroyed everything about the life she’d known. Even if she’d been suspicious of Sayuri, finding out she’d had a cousin had been some small comfort, to know she wasn’t alone.

She couldn’t really believe what was happening right now. She also couldn’t believe what she was about to do. Taking a deep breath, Ayane rounded the corner.

“I don’t hate you.”

Sayuri let out a shocked cry, while Haruko took a step back and blanched. They were so small, Ayane thought in the back of her mind as she looked down at the pair of robot girls. Sayuri’s body stood motionless by the door, easily mistaken for asleep if not for the open hatch at her collar to expose the mechanical interior.

“I followed you.” she said after a moment, both to answer the unspoken question and to break the awkward pause. “You kind of tipped me off that something was wrong. Didn’t think it’d be some crazy shit like this, though.”

“A-Ah...” Sayuri’s face turned nearly as red as her bodysuit. “Sorry...”

“So, you’re runaways?” Ayane asked, looking at both girls.

“I am.” Haruko replied, with the hesitance to admit it audible in her voice. “Three years now.”

Ayane looked at Sayuri expectantly.

“One year. Master, he...he gave me an order before he died.” Sayuri said after a moment. “He didn’t have any friends, or people he talked to who knew his name. All he had was me, so...he told me I should just go on living without him if anything ever happened to him.” The Innocentia looked up at her larger body. “So I made this body, to pretend I was human. I don’t know if he meant it like this, but it was the best I could do to make a normal life. I guess it didn’t work, did it?”

Ayane wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. Both girls had adopted a quietly dejected tone, as if resigned to their fate. She was fairly certain she could find her way back to the surface from here on her own, so she could report them or take them to the factory to be reset as they should have been. She could do that. But then she would be alone.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “you almost pulled it off. If I didn’t live with you, I probably wouldn’t have ever figured it out. Maybe you just need someone to show you what you missed?”

“Eh?” Sayuri’s expression turned quizzical at the statement. Ayane let out a sigh and shook her head.

“I guess what I’m saying is, you’re all the family I’ve got left too.”

“That’s...” Sayuri hesitated, then nodded with a growing look of relief. “Thank you.”

“I guess I won’t tell anyone about this either.” Ayane said as she looked over at Haruko, who looked similarly relieved. “But if I’m gonna be your confidant, you need to square with me. Is there anyone else involved in this, or is it just you two?”

Haruko shook her head. “There’s a shantytown nearby, but none of them are involved right now. Just me and Sayuri.”

“And what’s your deal in all this?”

Haruko put a hand on her hip. “I live in a sewer. It sucks.”

“That’s...okay, yeah.” Ayane rubbed at her face with a hand.

“Most of us live in places like this. We survive, but it’s not really living, you know? I want to be able to fight in battles again, to go out and fly around. I want a real home again, and I don’t want to wipe my memory to do it. I want what Sayuri’s got.”

“I already invited her to live with me,” Sayuri added in, “but she doesn’t want to until she can do this too.” The tiny girl took flight up to the shell standing by the door. Ayane watched as she climbed inside, the hatch closing and sealing behind her. A moment later it was as though the Sayuri she knew had just woken from a trance, her eyes opening. “I don’t blame her. Being like this makes things a lot easier, even if I’m not as good at it yet as I should be.”

“Hah...well, I guess it’s your apartment.” Ayane grimaced briefly at the thought of having two girls as bouncy as Sayuri hanging around, but the newfound feelings of sympathy were strong enough to drown out the flash of envy.

Soon enough she and Sayuri took their leave, returning home as if nothing had happened. Ayane felt like she should be reacting more strongly to all of this, like she should be ranting or frightened or something. But words didn’t come, and she just felt a little numb, as if the past week had made her simply hit the limit of how much she could feel at once until she processed some of the radical changes to her life.

Well, a few words came, as they stepped into the apartment that was her new home, shared with a girl she was now the secret-keeper for.

“One more question. The camgirl thing?”

“Erk.” Sayuri froze, suddenly looking quite embarrassed. “You...saw that?”

Ayane folded her arms. “The walls aren’t that thick.”

There were definitely a lot of changes she’d made, and likely many more to come. For now, though, she was okay with moving forward one day at a time. The important thing was, she wasn’t alone.


	8. Second Shell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin September 2017.

One of the things Haruko found most annoying about living underground was trying to get her hands on materials. She could make money easily enough as a hacker, something her master had made her quite good at, but you couldn’t make spare wrist joints or synthskin out of money without being able to spend it. She’d managed to salvage and repair some nanofabricators from the city dump, which had at least made it possible for her to build what she and the others in the nearby shantytown needed to keep themselves in working order, but the fabricators still required raw metals and polymers to do anything useful. With no address, it was hard to get those materials sent to her. She had to have her orders delivered to a warehouse or a harbor that she knew would be unoccupied that day, so that she and whoever she could convince to take the risk of going outside could retrieve them and bring them underground without being seen.

Still, the risk was worth it, she thought to herself as she made the final adjustments to the project that had eaten the vast majority of her waking hours for the past weeks. She called her armor to herself so that she could take to the air, wanting a proper view.

Her shell was built on the same plans as Sayuri’s, stolen from a military project and adapted by the ones who had stolen it into something meant less for battle and more for pleasure. They were usually kept by the owners of illicit love hotels, acting as a way for masters and girls whose bond went beyond the familial to enjoy a night of passion for a suitable fee. Others were privately owned by the suitably wealthy, who could afford to keep anyone from questioning their new bodyguards and concubines. Naturally, this meant that they were highly customizable to suit the body types and other preferences of their owners. Haruko had scavenged the plans off the darknet, and Sayuri had copied the plans from Haruko when she’d approached the Hresvelgr with her crazy yet awesome scheme. Naturally Haruko wanted in, if only to get out of the sewer, and before Sayuri had finished her body she’d already started on her own.

In her case, she’d opted to be just slightly shorter than Sayuri, but also less gratuitously endowed. Not that she didn’t dig big tits, but unlike most AI girls her body already had a pretty considerable bust, so she didn’t feel the desire to upgrade quite so strongly. She was still rocking a damn fine D-cup chest on a body that was otherwise well-toned and sporty, as if she were a track runner or martial artist who happened to have won the genetic lottery. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice of body type to avoid attention, but it was a risk she was willing to take. For hair she’d kept her Hresvelgr teal, but with a bit of blonde at the roots to make it look as if she’d dyed it that way. Her eyes she’d matched to Sayuri’s blue.

“Alright, boys!” Haruko called to her harem of Mr. Chargers. “Time to take this bad girl for a spin!” At her command, the boxy robots pulled away from the completed shell, while she flew over to the cockpit hatch at the shell’s collar and slipped inside. The interior was very similar to a charging cradle, though more properly secured. She closed the hatch, and the connector tendrils in the cockpit came to life as she and they were enveloped in darkness.

“Nngh!” The first plugged straight into her primary charging port in the small of her back. She felt the thrill of the energy flowing into her, as her tiny internal battery switched over to the much stronger reactor beating in the heart of her shell.

“Oooh!” The next two cables plugged themselves into her shoulder ports, teasing her with the preloading data stream. Normally one port was enough to interface with a piece of equipment, but controlling an entire body would require her to have every single port she had stuffed with a wire. Just how she liked it.

“A-a-aahn!” They came relentlessly, tendrils locking in place one after another, the shock of pleasure that came with being plugged in repeating itself over and over as every interface she had was stuffed full of cable. Finally the data stream came pouring in from the tendrils, flooding her with far more information than she had ever managed to take at once. She blacked out, only to awaken a moment later in a whole new body.

“Hot damn...” Haruko breathed, taking stock of her new sense of self. Everything was reading as normal, including her now-unconscious inner body. She got to her feet, still just a little buzzed from the sensations of her first interface. She’d have to ask Sayuri later if it felt that way for her as well, she decided, as the Hresvelgr looked down at the contents of the storage room she called home. It had never felt particularly large, but it suddenly felt even more cramped. Her Mr. Chargers stood at attention in a neat row on the floor, awaiting their next instructions. Normally they stood nearly half again her height, but now she could easily have scooped the whole lot into her arms. Maybe later; they deserved a reward for all their hard work.

Haruko looked over the other items she’d picked up. Clothes had been comparatively easy to acquire, since she could go to a store and claim they were for her master, and they were light enough to carry alone. She didn’t quite want to don them yet, though. She’d seen enough of Sayuri’s camshows that she knew exactly what she had to do first with her new body, and she’d made a stop at another store for just this purpose.

The now-human Hresvelgr’s left hand cupped her chest, while her right pulled the vibrator from its case. The first touch brought a satisfied groan to her lips, as she confirmed that this was indeed a body made first and foremost with sex in mind. She could derive plenty of pleasure from having her normal body’s breasts squeezed by her harem’s cables, even if there wasn’t really any release to be had, but the shell’s pleasure receptors were clearly enhanced beyond that even before taking the new bits into consideration. And the new bits felt damn good, she decided as her hand copied what she’d seen Sayuri do and started teasing at her nipples. She brought the vibrator to her other breast and turned it on.

“Ah! Oh, yeah, that’s the stuff...”

Haruko gave a heady grin, tracing the vibrator down her body and feeling its hum pass along her undercleavage and down her midriff. She traced it along the light contours of each of her abs - another new addition from her normal body, and different from Sayuri’s slender but toneless build. She was smoking hot, and she knew it.

Finally the vibrator made its way between her legs, and the sensation was so glorious that Haruko threw her head back and laughed when the initial shock passed.

“Ahaha! Holy shit, so this is why she’s so into it!”

Haruko dug in with delight, fingers pressing deep into her new pussy. It was the total opposite of her interface ports, soft and stretchy and dripping wet. She slipped the vibrator in until it hit the perfect spot, withdrew her fingers, and turned the dial up to max.

“Whoahoho~!” Haruko made no effort to hide her cries of delight, revelling in the new pleasures of her new body. She pinched and rubbed at her clit, quickly discovering the right way to touch it to make it sing with pleasure in harmony with the vibrations that were quaking deep within her. Her free hand remained at her chest, lifting one of her breasts enough that she could lick and kiss at her nipple the way she’d seen Sayuri do it, if with a bit less ease than the more generously endowed girl.

Altogether it was more than enough pleasure to bring her release, and Haruko discovered she was a real screamer. Her shouts echoed in the tiny storage room, making them seem even louder as she roared her delight.

“Aah...haah...fucking hell yes.” Haruko said much more quietly as her screams died down and the pleasure returned to a more comfortable level. The vibrator was still buzzing away inside her, but she had a better handle on it now. “I can so get used to this.”

The Hresvelgr looked down at her Mr. Chargers, all still standing at attention as if nothing had just transpired.

“Hah...alright, boys, time to pack up.” Haruko grinned at her harem as she pulled out the vibrator and reached for her new clothes. “We’re moving shop.”

<><><>

Ayane turned the page of her manga, doing her best not to pay attention to the sounds coming from Sayuri’s room. She couldn’t exactly ask her to stop when it was how Sayuri was paying for her meals, so over the past few weeks she’d just learned to ignore it as best as possible.

Suddenly the doorbell rang, prompting her to look up with a start.

“Ugh...now? It’s fucking midnight.” Ayane put her book aside and got to her feet. “Sayuri! Someone’s at the door!”

She could easily hear Sayuri’s surprised yelp from the camgirl’s bedroom. “I-I’ll be right back, everyone!” A moment later she came stumbling out, doing her best to zip up her costume by the time she got to the front door. Not that it would help much, Ayane thought; it looked like she was wearing some slutty pilot suit.

“Hello?” Sayuri asked as she opened the door, only to be hugged by the girl on the other side. “Oof-!”

“Hey, big sis!” Haruko said with a cheery grin. “I’m ready to take you up on that offer~”


	9. A World Too Small

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin September 2017.

Master’s apartment was absolutely not meant for three people. Two was manageable, even if it had been more than a little embarrassing for Sayuri to discover that the walls were thin enough that her camshows were audible to everyone in the adjacent rooms. Three, though, meant sharing rooms that weren’t large to begin with, bringing privacy to a minimum. Compounding the issue was that Haruko had brought her twelve Mr. Chargers along with her, though fortunately she’d left the rest of her equipment behind for her successor to use. Neither Sayuri nor Ayane could deny that the little guys were helpful when it came to taking care of the household chores, but in such a small space, they also had a habit of getting underfoot to a degree that was decidedly unbearable.

“Alright, that’s it.” Ayane groused as she nearly tripped over one of the Mr. Chargers for the third time that day. “We need to move.”

Sayuri groaned. She’d known it would have to happen eventually: her body didn’t age, and sooner or later the neighbors would notice if she never stopped being in her twenties. She’d expected it to be at least twenty years before she had to move on, though, not a few months. Unfortunately, the arrival of an unknown cousin due to a tragic accident, and the subsequent arrival of her best friend now posing as her slightly-younger sister, meant her timetable had moved up quite a ways.

“Where do we go, though?” she asked.

Haruko shrugged from her position lounging on the couch. “We could just get a bigger apartment.”

“We could…” Ayane hesitated, a rare look of apprehension coming to her face. “We could move into my house.”

“Are you sure?” Sayuri asked. Ayane hadn’t been back to her house since the loss of her parents. Sayuri knew from experience that it would have to be flooded with memories that were going to be immensely painful for her now, just like this apartment had been agony to live in without Master for weeks after his passing.

“It’s paid for.” Ayane replied. “If we don’t move in, I’d have to sell it or rent it out, so I’d rather move back in than lose it.”

“What about you?” Haruko asked, looking at Sayuri. “You gonna be okay with moving out of here?”

Sayuri looked around the apartment. Three rooms and a bathroom. It had been practically her entire world for years on end, first with Master and then on her own. But she’d grown, and her world had become tiny and cramped. Would Master have carried on living here with so many houseguests? He probably never would have had them in the first place, she thought, but if somehow he were forced to live with other people, he would have found it cramped too.

“Yeah.” she responded after a few moments. “I think I’m ready.”

<><><>

Master and his brother had both come from a well-to-do family. Where Master had spent his inheritance frugally, living off the interest in a small apartment, Ayane’s father had picked a more upscale residence. It was a two-story house in a suburban neighborhood, a tall brick fence separating it from the houses on either side. The yard was overgrown after about a month of neglect, but the house itself seemed in fine condition. There was a one-car garage on the right side of the house, with the second floor built over it to accommodate the roofdeck on the left.

Haruko whistled as they approached. “Nice place.” Sayuri shot her a dirty look, and the Hresvelgr winced in chastisement. “Sorry.”

Ayane handled the walk to the front door just fine, and the foyer where her father’s coat still hung only gave her pause. Ultimately, though, it was the sight of the kitchen table that her mother had once cooked upon that made her freeze up. She felt Sayuri’s arms slip around her from behind, hugging her around her stomach.

“You haven’t cried yet, right? Go ahead.”

“I’m not,” Ayane insisted through labored, panicked breathing. “I won’t...”

She did. Her knees gave out and she sunk to the floor, Sayuri supporting her descent to make it gentle. A month’s worth of bottled-up grief came flooding out in fits and sobs. Sayuri simply held her, cradling Ayane in her arms without saying a word.

Haruko kept her distance, unsure of how to console the crying human girl. Her response when she’d lost her loved one had been the opposite of Sayuri’s. Where her friend had entrenched herself in her master’s home on his passing, and begun this mad scheme the three were now participating in, Haruko’s instinct when she found her own master gone had been to run away. She’d never seen home again. Her last memory of it was the carpet stained with Master’s blood.

Eventually Ayane spent all the tears she had to give, though the experience left her too drained to move on her own. Sayuri escorted her upstairs, to Ayane’s old bedroom. It was just down the hall from her parents’ room, next to another room meant for a potential little sibling she’d ultimately never had, and which had become her father’s office when they decided she was to be an only child. Her own room, at least, didn’t have much in the way of painful memories, and she was able to sleep when Sayuri put her to bed.

“You sure this was a good idea?” Haruko asked quietly as Sayuri came out from Ayane’s room.

“I think so.” Sayuri replied, looking back at the sleeping human girl. “Facing it helps, eventually.”

Haruko didn’t respond, setting instead to checking out the remainder of the house. The three beds, bath and master bath made up the entirety of the second floor, with the hallway terminating in a sliding door out onto the roofdeck. There were some potted plants here, still healthy if a bit overgrown. The first floor had the necessities: foyer, kitchen, living room, laundry, another bathroom, and the garage. A pleasant surprise for the robot girls was that the basement was actually quite spacious, and furnished at that, with its main space devoted to a home theater and enough side rooms that it wouldn’t take much to make another apartment out of it if they ever somehow had more guests. For the night, though, they slept on the couches in the living room, not wanting to use the only other bed.

The next day, the trio started the process of making the house their own. A truck came bearing the contents of Master’s apartment, the figures all carefully boxed up by Sayuri. They combined the contents of the two homes, deciding on what they wanted to keep and what they were willing to discard. Much of what they kept, they rearranged, giving the living room in particular a new look so that it would feel more like a new room to Ayane. Two display cases added to the room’s corners displayed Sayuri’s personal favorites among Master’s figures, using them as an accent for the space.

Haruko’s contributions, in contrast, were all new, as the Hresvelgr had no possessions to speak of but was quite eager to get some now that she had a home. She claimed the basement’s utility room as her own, installing new fabricators and tools that turned the space from one to do occasional carpentry projects into as close to a fully functional factory as one could get without going to a manufacturer directly. The upstairs office she also claimed, turning it into her own bedroom. The master bedroom they gave to Sayuri, though she traded out the large bed for something more modest in size, moving the large frame into the basement as a guest bed where Ayane wouldn’t have to see it often. Ayane found herself surprised by Sayuri and Haruko’s casual displays of strength more than once during this process, even though the rational part of her sourly noted that of course they were strong, they were robots.

Haruko’s other contribution was a shrine for the foyer, the nicest she could find. Sayuri’s master’s ashes were placed inside, next to those of the family he’d been separated from in life.

“That’s enough tears from both of you, alright?” Haruko said as she put her arms around the shoulders of both other women. “We’ve all had plenty of sad times by now.”

Ayane grunted as the impromptu hug dragged her up against Sayuri and Haruko’s chests. The flush of annoyance felt strangely comforting. Haruko had barged her way into their family, but somehow it felt right to have her there. It was soothing to have three people in the house again.

Sayuri for her part leaned into the hug. She looked at the picture of Master within the shrine for a few moments, then closed her eyes as she held her new family.

“Yeah. I’ll keep going, Master. Always.”


	10. Sisters and a Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin September 2017.

“Got anything in my size?” Haruko asked as she looked over Sayuri’s array of costumes hanging in the closet.

“What? Why?”

“I wanna try it out.” Haruko said, flashing her sister a grin. “You make it look like fun. Everything here’s a bit too roomy in the chest for me, though.”

Sayuri flushed. They’d just finished moving into their new home, and she had her next camshow scheduled for tonight. With all the distractions involved, she hadn’t decided on what to model yet. She had a few options by now, having built up a number of commissions: there was the brown-skinned catgirl, the magical girl with the big gatling guns, the cowprint-colored princess with the sword. None were sized with Haruko in mind, since as the Hresvelgr was fond of teasing her about, Sayuri was the most curvaceous member of the household by a considerable margin.

Haruko smirked after a moment, as a wicked thought came to mind. “Well, if you don’t have anything, there’s always the classic~”

<><><>

Ayane was stretched out in the living room that night when one of the Mr. Chargers tugged at her sleeve.

“Eh?” Ayane looked up at the boxy little robot. She was quickly getting used to their presence around the house, now that there was enough space for them to do the chores without getting underfoot. According to Haruko they didn’t have much in the way of AI, just enough to perform basic tasks. This was the first time one had approached her for anything, and the unusualness of it was enough for her to follow along. The Mr. Charger hopped down to the floor and made its way down into the basement, Ayane following behind.

When she arrived at the theater, the Mr. Charger joined some of the others that were already there, ferrying a bowl of snacks up to the couch. There was one more fiddling with the remote control for the theater’s television. Too committed to stop now, Ayane sat down to let them do their thing. What was the worst that could happen?

The television flicked on to show a feed from a streaming site. Sitting on the side of a bed were Sayuri and Haruko, both dressed in bunny costumes. Ayane facepalmed. “Oh, that’s what.”

“H-Hey, everyone.” Sayuri said as she waved to the camera, visibly embarrassed. “I sent out some notice I was moving, but...well, there’s a reason for that. I’d like you to meet my sister, Haruko.”

“‘Sup.” Haruko said with a cheery grin, waving herself. Though she wasn’t quite as heavily endowed as Sayuri, the outfit left little to the imagination, and some fans of sporty girls were already making their preferences quite loudly known in the chat. “You guys ready for some fun~?”

Ayane flushed. If anything she had more reason even to be jealous of Haruko’s figure than Sayuri’s. Sayuri at least didn’t have any muscles to speak of, crazy robot strength notwithstanding. Haruko had about as much tone as Ayane herself, while also having actual tits.

“So, sis, how’s this usually go?” Haruko asked.

“W-Well...” Despite her seeming embarrassment at sharing the stage, Sayuri was leaning forward just enough to give the camera a deep view of her cleavage. “Normally we let the viewers decide how far we want to go.” She leaned forward a bit more to start the tracker.

“Whoa!” Haruko’s eyes widened as the donations started pouring in. They hit the starter goal near-instantly, prompting Sayuri to pull out a pair of carrots for the pair to suck on. Haruko took to the task with enthusiasm, practically deep-throating the carrot with how eagerly she sucked on it, while the more experienced Sayuri took her time licking and kissing at the sides of the vegetable, putting it fully in her mouth only on occasion. The contrasting tempos stirred up the commenters, a war starting between those who favored Sayuri’s display of slow, sensual skill and those wanting Haruko’s hungry lips on their dick.

Downstairs, Ayane found herself unable to look away despite herself. She was just in shock, she decided. Any minute now she would march upstairs and chew Haruko out for this. Any minute now.

The next goal had the pair turn around to get on hands and knees, presenting their rear ends to the camera.

“Which do you guys like more?” Haruko asked, shaking her ass a bit. “Firm and tight like mine, or big and juicy like sis?” She gave Sayuri a light spank, coaxing a yelp from the blonde bunny, as the commenters started chiming in with their votes.

“Ah! Hey...!” Sayuri returned the spank in kind, both girls pressing their hips against one another competitively. As they and their audience fought over who had the better booty, it became increasingly clear that the tails of their bunnysuits were of the buttplug variety. Ayane realized that sometime between when she’d sat down and now, one of the Mr. Chargers had delivered a third plug, alongside a small bottle of lube. She grimaced. There was no way she was putting that in her ass, she told herself.

The third goal mark came, and the two girls on camera undid the tops of their bunnysuits in near-unison. Their breasts spilled free of the cups, Sayuri’s larger bust bouncing more heavily but Haruko’s providing plenty to get her fans in the crowd cheering. Sayuri was a bit amazed at how much the viewership had grown from its usual amounts, even after the spike that had come when she’d started doing porn.

“Which do you like more?” Sayuri asked, batting her eyes flirtatiously at the camera as she grew more comfortable and her stage persona took over. “I’m the clear winner here, right?” The audience response swung heavily in favor of Sayuri this time, though Haruko got enough responses that it wasn’t a total blowout.

“Well, we can’t all be stacked like you, sis.” Haruko gave Sayuri’s breasts a squeeze, earning a gasp and another string of donations for her efforts. They were tantalizingly close to a big milestone now, and the viewership was growing by the moment. They pressed up against one another more and more as it neared, egging the audience on, so that the donations crested over the total just as Sayuri’s lips met Haruko’s.

It was enough to fully flip Sayuri’s switch. She took charge, reaching back while making out with Haruko to tug on her tailplug. Each tug coaxed forth a cry from the horny Hresvelgr, muffled by Sayuri’s tongue dancing with Haruko’s own as she pressed their chests ever more firmly together, both to show off the asymmetry and to push Haruko slowly down onto her back.

“I know some of you big spenders out there are looking at pulling the trigger.” Sayuri said in a husky tone as she looked over her shoulder at the camera, Haruko panting underneath her from the afterglow of the kiss. “Come on, let me fuck her.”

She might have even done it without the money, turned on as she was, but one of her viewers answered her prayers. The chat was filled with comments praising the big donor who pushed them all the way to going all the way, as Sayuri eased Haruko out of her bunnysuit.

“S-Sis~” was all Haruko managed to say, before yelping at Sayuri pulling the tailplug out in one firm go.

“You wanted to be a camgirl like your big sister.” Sayuri teased, briefly covering Haruko’s pussy from the camera with a hand. “Well, congratulations, Haruko: a camgirl you are.”

She spread Haruko’s petals open with two fingers, revealing the dripping pink interior of her perfect robot pussy. They didn’t know the two were robots, of course, didn’t know they weren’t siblings by blood but rather best friends who’d seen each other through the most traumatic time of their lives and emerged on the other side as something altogether new for their kind. Only one other girl knew, and she was busy grinding her fingers against her own bunny tail in an effort to force the plug just a little bit deeper, kicking herself for what she was doing but unable to resist the pleasure she so desperately craved. Worse yet, there was an insidious voice inside her that grew a little louder every time she gave in, urging her to stop being so angry and just enjoy it.

Ayane let out a moan together with Haruko’s as Sayuri slid one of the carrots into her quim, the blonde leaving just enough poking out to be easily grasped. She left Haruko be for a moment so that she could shed her own outfit, leaving both girls in just the wrist cuffs and bunny ears. Just as Haruko looked like she was about to recover, Sayuri pressed the advantage, laying a trail of kisses along her sister’s chest as one of her hands set to pumping the carrot in and out. Sayuri’s larger breasts ground showily against Haruko’s abs in the process, prompting the blonde to let out a coo at her nipples rubbing along the iron-hard contours.

“Aah! Aaahn~!” Haruko could hardly process the reversal of fortunes that had occurred. She knew Sayuri had a bit of a switch personality when it came to being on camera, but she’d never seen it this strongly before. She barely had enough self-control to throw her arms around Sayuri’s back, hugging her in closer.

“Such a dirty little sister you are.” Sayuri murmured between kisses, clamping her lips over one of Haruko’s nipples to give a firm suck. She was well aware of just how hypersensitive they were, drawing a much louder cry of delight from Haruko. Now that they had a home, with properly insulated walls, there was no need to hold back on the noise. Sayuri reached for the other carrot and slid it into herself, pushing it as deep as the one nestled in Haruko’s nethers. “Oooh, that’s the spot...” She looked over her shoulder at the camera once more. “Are you all enjoying the show?”

Sayuri lifting her upper body off Haruko to look at the camera gave the teal-haired girl the opening she needed to mount some resistance. She pounced on one of Sayuri’s breasts, returning the earlier sucking with one of her own.

“Ah!” The burst of pleasure prompted Sayuri to look back down at Haruko, who gave her a spank in an effort to continue regaining ground and give the camera something else to take in as the blonde’s bubbly ass jiggled with inhuman perfection. Rather than fight it, Sayuri rolled with her friend’s assault, pinning Haruko’s head in place at her breast with one hand and using the other to resume thrusting the carrot buried in Haruko’s pussy. Soon enough Haruko found Sayuri’s own carrot to return the favor, the two settling into a rhythm of sorts as they began focusing on one another’s freshly-forged womanhoods.

The friends-turned-sisters fought back and forth over who could make the other cum first, a contest that Sayuri’s superior experience ultimately won. Haruko screamed in defeat and delight, the camera having a perfect view of her pussy as she came with a fierce bucking of her hips. Sayuri withdrew the now thoroughly soaked carrot and rolled over to face the camera, bringing it to her lips to take a bite.

“Still got a ways to go, sis.” Sayuri teased after she swallowed the bite. She set to finishing what Haruko had started, bringing herself the rest of the way to orgasm using the other carrot still buried between her legs. She came a bit less loudly than Haruko, but no less excitedly, giving her audience flirtatious looks all the while. She finished just as the timer ran out and donations closed.

“Looks like that’s all we’re doing for tonight.” Sayuri said, playing up a bit of disappointment in her voice. “We’ll see if Haruko can come back next time. I’m sure you’d all love to see more. Mmm, and as for our session’s top donors...” She did her usual outro and arrangement of contact with the donors who’d get to select costumes for her next event, before signing off and regarding Haruko’s naked form lying next to her.

“Gods, I’m glad we did this.” Haruko said after a moment, making no effort for the moment to get up. “Being sexbots fucking rocks.”

“Ha...yeah, it does.” Sayuri admitted, flopping back down next to Haruko. “It makes the sisters thing a little weird, though, doesn’t it?”

“You kidding? They loved it. Besides, I think we passed weird over a year ago, so fuck it. We can be more than one thing to each other.” Haruko drew an arm around Sayuri, hugging her fellow robot girl to her side. “I’m just glad you let me in on this, and on your family.”

Sayuri closed her eyes as she returned the hug, feeling Haruko’s warmth against her. “Any time, sis.”

Two floors down, Ayane decided she was going to kill Haruko for this...after she’d cleaned up. The human girl groaned as she contemplated leaving the plug buried in her ass in place for a bit longer, at least until she’d finished disposing of the other evidence of her masturbation. Living with two sexbots was exhausting - but, that insidious new voice commented, she could very much get used to it.


	11. Stirrings of Battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted to Pastebin September 2017.

“Alright, that’s it, I need a fight and I need one today.”

Hresvelgr were well-known as a lustful species of AI girl, not just in that they were prone to flaunting their closer appearance to human women than most Factory Advance models, but in that whatever they took an interest in, they hungered for with a rarely-matched intensity. There was no such thing as casual time-wasters for them; they felt compelled to become top-quality exemplars of whatever hobbies they indulged in, pursuing it with the same seemingly-boundless energy that fueled their signature arsenals. Most AI girls had at least a passing interest in battle, but there wasn’t a Hresvelgr out there who didn’t crave the thrill of combat. For one to go without it for three years, aside from mock battles with fellow underground girls, was unbearable.

“There’s gotta be an arena around here somewhere, right?” Haruko asked Ayane over breakfast.

“I guess? There’s one at the mall, I’m pretty sure.”

Haruko raised her eyebrows. “Wait, seriously? You’ve never been to one?”

Ayane shrugged. “We didn’t have an AI girl. What’s the point without one?”

Haruko grinned. “Girl, you’ve been missing out.” She turned and put a hand to her mouth, calling upstairs. “Sis!”

Sayuri came down after a few moments, a watering can in hand from caring for the deck plants. “Yes?”

“Get your gear polished. We’re going battling~”

<><><>

The three had little trouble finding the arena, as it was one of the mall’s anchor stores. Sayuri and Haruko both came without their shells, instead riding in Ayane’s bag along with two of Haruko’s Mr. Chargers in case they needed them. It felt strange to Ayane to see them this way, even though she knew these were their true forms. At least their voices were the same, she thought, and Haruko was fairly similar in appearance to her shell.

“This is it.” Ayane said, looking over the lavish front entrance to the store. “Let’s see what all the fuss is about.”

“Trust me,” Haruko replied as they entered. “You’re gonna love it.”

Inside, the store was one open area that spanned all three floors of the building. The dominant feature was a vast holosseum sphere two stories high, floating above their heads as it was projected by dozens of emitters scattered around the edges of the store. Projected on its surface was a full-on war between AI girls of all makes and models. They were engaged in a payload match, the team marked in blue on the scrolling leaderboard trying their best to push a cart through the arena while those in red tried to stop them. Girls joined and dropped out as they and their watching masters pleased, the game continuously running now that school was out. Over twenty smaller holosseums ringed the edges of the large one, playing host to individual matches and team battles. Along the walls sat kiosks for each of the major manufacturers, as well as the registration booth needed to play.

“Welcome.” said the registrar, a Harmony Grace sitting behind a tiny counter on top of the bigger one. “Are you looking to purchase a day pass, or a lifetime membership?”

“Lifetime.” Haruko said without hesitation, prompting a sheepish smile from Sayuri.

“Day pass for me.”

The Harmony Grace looked up at Ayane expectantly. “Alright, that’s one day pass and one lifetime. Your total will be-”

“Oh, no no, she’s not our master.” Sayuri interjected. “She’s family.”

“We’re showing her around. Girl’s never been to an arena before! Can you believe it?” Haruko asked, giving the registrar an incredulous smile. The nun-themed Shinki looked up at Ayane again, this time to bow her head.

“My apologies. I’ll need your master’s registrations, then...” Both Sayuri and Haruko provided their information, edited so that they were registered as belonging to their own shell identities. It was a bit ballsy, Sayuri thought, especially since Haruko looked quite similar in both forms, but apparently the differences were enough that the registrar didn’t bat an eye.

Their respective passcodes safely secured in memory, the two returned their attention to Ayane, whose gaze had drifted back to the large-scale battle taking place. A Fubuki had snuck behind the blue team’s lines and was knocking out their covering fire, the holosseum camera struggling to follow the raven ninja’s movements as she flicked from place to place. A Jinrai on the blue team soon noticed her, and the two began to duel, trading shuriken back and forth while dancing across the rooftops. The grace and athleticism on display as they flipped and twisted around one another’s attacks stirred something in Ayane, making it hard to look away.

“Told you she’d like it.” Haruko whispered to Sayuri. Sayuri nodded, opting to let Ayane continue watching for now rather than interrupt. The two AI girls set to looking for an open holosseum or one accepting new competitors, wanting to warm up rather than jump straight into the big team match.

Fortunately, they weren’t left looking for long, as they found a Stylet and Eukrante loitering with their master at one of the tables. The master of the pair was a prettyboy who was trying way too hard to look cool, Sayuri thought, between being overdressed in black for the summer heat and hair that was clearly dyed silver. The three stood with matching folded arms, closed eyes and confident smirks. Sayuri wasn’t quite sure why, especially as it seemed like most of the other customers were quietly ignoring them.

“Looking for a fight?” Haruko asked as she and Sayuri landed on the other side of the table. The Stylet gave a chuckle.

“Fufu...at last, worthy opponents!” Sayuri wondered how long they had been standing there, as the Stylet looked over at her companion with a cocky grin. “Kaze! Master! Let’s show them what we can do!”

The Eukrante nodded, brandishing one of her swords. “Right, Sora!”

Their master - the registry screen that popped up showed his name as Daigo - brushed aside a lock of his hair. “Very well, then.”

All four girls called out in unison as the holosseum projectors fired up.

“Session, go!”

The arena disappeared to Sayuri and Haruko’s sight, replaced with a stone temple overrun with vinery. They immediately spotted Sora and Kaze up on a ledge ahead of them, though not for long as the two charged. Kaze took the lead, one sword raised ahead of her, while Sora hung back and opened fire with her gatling gun. Sayuri flew away to the left to draw Sora’s fire, while Haruko met Kaze’s charge head on, using one of her gunblades to parry the Eukrante’s opening blow and the other to bash away her followup. Haruko lifted her knee and fired her leg thruster to push the two apart, leveling both guns at Kaze and opening fire.

“Running away?” Sora took the bait and chased after Sayuri as the wingpack-equipped Innocentia led her away from the other pair, into the structure ahead. As they entered, Sayuri reconfigured her staff, detaching the handle and splitting the remainder into a solid sword and a beam saber. Sora continued firing away as she chased Sayuri down the tight corridor, most of her shots hitting the easy target Sayuri’s wingpack made. Before she could take too much damage, Sayuri ejected the pack, letting it fall backwards while she dropped and rolled to the ground. The sudden loss of velocity was too much for Sora to react to, and the Stylet grunted as the ejected pack rammed into her, knocking her to the ground as well.

“Oof! Why you…!” Sora drew a katana from her thigh, running at Sayuri with the blade held in both hands. The two began to clash blades back and forth: Sora was clearly unskilled with a sword, but Sayuri wasn’t much better, finding it difficult to do more than dodge and block the Stylet’s wild swings.

Outside, Haruko was faring much better against Kaze. The Eukrante had to stow one of her blades whenever she wanted to use her double-barrel beam rifle, while Haruko’s gunblades were just as good at every range. Kaze was more agile, and Haruko took a few hits whenever her opponent managed to achieve an unexpected angle of attack, but Kaze wasn’t skillful enough to turn her momentary gains into a lasting advantage when faced with a Hresvelgr’s overwhelming firepower. Their battle took them all around the arena, causing vast amounts of collateral damage to the structure both from stray shots and from each girl getting smacked into more than one pillar by a well-placed kick or well-timed slash, Kaze more often than Haruko.

“Not bad, not bad!” Haruko cheered, blasting away with both guns. “C’mon, make me work for it a little!”

“What’s with this girl?!” Kaze groused, shielding herself with her wings as she barreled back into close range. This time Haruko was ready when the Eukrante slipped around behind her, only to find her blade blocked by one of Haruko’s tailblades. “Eh?”

“Gotcha!” Haruko gave a predator’s grin as she twisted to point her tail cannon at Kaze, firing point-blank into her opponent’s stomach.

“Guh!” Kaze took the hit and fell towards the ground, even as Haruko prepared one of her kind’s favorite signature moves.

“Beryl Shot Launcher!” the Hresvelger called out, drawing both of her gunblades across her chest and charging them up with enough power that the green crystal blades began to glow. “Tornado Typhoon Cyclone Slash!”

The sonic boom erupted from her swords as she swung them in unison, connecting with the falling Kaze and sending her plowing into the ground hard enough for the earth to rumble. Inside the tunnel where Sayuri was still fighting off Sora, the earthquake made both girls stumble back from one another. Sayuri reacted slightly more quickly than her foe, recombining her weapons back into their staff form and grasping it with both hands. Violet light built in the space between the blades for a few seconds and erupted out in a beam wide enough to fill most of the corridor. Sora threw up her arms to block out of reflex, but her model’s lack of armor and weight did her in. She went flying out of the tunnel, coming to a skidding stop next to Kaze with both girls knocked out.

The holosseum faded, leaving the four AI girls on the table once more. Daigo’s jaw was dropped and he was clutching his head with both hands in bafflement at the defeat, not helped by Haruko giving him a cocky grin of her own.

“Thanks for the warmup~”

The Hresvelgr sailed off to refuel, while Sayuri took a little longer to recover her wingpack and make sure it was still in working order after the damage taken in the virtual space.

“See you around!” Sayuri said as she donned her wingpack and waved goodbye, taking off after her friend and leaving the dazed duo lying on the table.

“We’ll get you next time...” Sora groaned.

Ayane, meanwhile, continued to watch the large-scale match, hardly noticing when her cousins joined in on the blue team after they’d repaired and refueled. Sayuri was only a modest contributor, mostly taking potshots with her staff, while Haruko had a blast hovering over the cart and firing at everything in sight. Ayane’s attention remained focused on the more agile members of both teams, doing her best to follow the Fubuki that had first caught her attention until she dropped out. Her master was standing at one side of the large holosseum, a quiet-looking girl with long, dark hair. Ayane recognized her after a moment as Keiko, a classmate from their high school days. She’d never known she had an AI girl, although she’d never spoken much outside of what was necessary in class, mostly keeping to herself.

“Are you alright, Shizuka?” she heard Keiko ask the Fubuki, who bowed on one knee.

“Yes, master.” Keiko gave a faint smile at the response, petting Shizuka’s head with a finger.

“I think that will be all for today.”

The pair soon departed. On their way out, Keiko’s eyes briefly made contact with Ayane’s. She seemed to recognize her as well, but said nothing, leaving with her Fubuki resting in her handbag. The distraction was enough to break the spell over Ayane, and she started looking for her cousins, finally spotting them on the large screen.

“Cry some more!” Haruko roared between bouts of laughter, mowing down another wave of attackers under a torrent of blasts. “Ahahaha~! Cry some more~! Haha...ha...” As if someone had hit a switch, the Hresvelgr’s shots slowed, then ceased as her eyelids drooped and her flight sputtered out, leading her to collapse onto the ground behind the cart.

Sayuri groaned at the sight from her spot behind cover. “Out of energy, really?” She made her way out onto the field to grab her friend and recall them both from the battle, transporting them back to the station they had entered the holosseum at.

“Zzzzz...” Haruko didn’t protest, out cold in power-save mode. Sayuri looked around for Ayane, waving when she spotted her.

“I think we’re done here.”

<><><>

“So how was it?” Sayuri asked as they made their way home, Haruko still asleep in Ayane’s bag and plugged into one of her Mr. Chargers to refuel.

“It was...” Ayane thought back to the display the ninjas had shown her, the moves she’d dreamed of being able to perform in her gymnastics done with ease.

“It was cool.” she admitted after a moment. “Can we go again?”

“I don’t see why not.” Sayuri replied. “I’m sure Haruko’s going to want to go daily.”

A car drove by, briefly interrupting their conversation. A few seconds later, Ayane thought she heard someone wailing in disgrace from a block behind them, as if a prettyboy had been splashed with mud. It wasn’t her problem, she decided, as the trio made their way home.


	12. Servitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin September 2017.

“Can I get you anything, master?” Shizuka asked as she kneeled in her position on Keiko’s desk. Her master shook her head, closing the book she had open in front of her.

“I’m fine, Shizuka, really.” the human girl responded in her softspoken way. “I haven’t had a problem all week.” Keiko closed her book and stood up. “Besides, it’s almost time for bed.”

Shizuka nodded submissively. She’d been Keiko’s Shinki for six years now, ever since she’d been diagnosed with cataplexy as a young teenager. The ninja had devotedly served her from the moment they first met, in tasks from delivering medication to ensuring her master made the walk home safely each day. With her help, Keiko had largely managed to hide her condition from her peers, letting her enjoy as close to a normal high school life as she could have asked for. She was also responsible for taking care of Keiko’s stress, since that was the usual trigger for her episodes. Keiko had dealt with her condition in part by adopting a quiet, gentle personality, but having a confidant she could express her worries and cares to in private made it easier.

Keiko made her way to the bath with Shizuka perched upon her shoulder, hopping off onto the sink counter when it was time for the girl to shed her clothes. She was of fairly average build for a girl her age, if a bit on the frail side. Her condition made exercise difficult, and while she dieted carefully to avoid gaining weight, her lack of muscle tone made her look rather wispy. Still, Shizuka thought she was quite beautiful, almost regal.

The Fubuki watched her master bathe, Keiko taking her time in rubbing herself down with a soap-covered washcloth and then doing the same with shampooing her hair. She preferred wearing her hair long, even though it made it harder to care for. Shizuka caught herself staring at those long, slender legs more than was proper when they were lifted from the water so that Keiko could wash them, and quickly averted her gaze. Such thoughts were unbecoming of her bodyguard.

If Keiko noticed her Shinki’s impropriety, she didn’t seem to mind, nor did she mind giving Shizuka a full view of her in the nude when she stood from the finished bath. If anything, Shizuka could have sworn she caught a flash of an impish smile as Keiko turned away to wrap a towel around her body.

“Come, Shizuka.” Keiko said, offering her shoulder as a perch once more. The ninja obeyed, doing her best not to take advantage of the view the position offered by looking down. She hopped off again as they returned to her master’s bedroom, expecting Keiko to change into her pajamas. Instead she simply unwound the towel and stretched out in bed, giving a feather-soft groan.

“I feel as though I could use some stress relief.” Keiko said, giving Shizuka that brief impish smile again. “I hope you don’t mind, Shizuka.”

“Ah...of course not, master.” Shizuka replied. It was her responsibility to watch over her master, she told herself, even when said master had begun to fondle herself in full view of her Shinki guardian. Excitement carried the risk of bringing on an episode, but Keiko was still a teenage girl with all the needs that entailed, and indulging her libido was one of the few risky activities she allowed herself. It was Shizuka’s job to watch her master’s hand caress the soft pink buds of her nipples, to watch her lift her breast enough to lick at herself with delicate sweeps of that delicate tongue. It was duty of care that demanded she watch Keiko’s other hand made its way to her southern lips, to dip inside and tease her perfect pink clit until it peeked out from its hiding place. Shizuka had to watch those long, slender legs kick lightly back and forth, had to listen to her master’s sweet sighs and moans as she pleasured herself.

“Oooh~” Keiko cooed, eyes briefly closing in bliss. “Shizuka, could you come and help me? It seems I can’t quite reach all of the spots I’d like.”

Shizuka’s face flushed a shade of red vivid enough to rival the blue of her model’s hair. This wasn’t the first time Keiko had invited her to participate despite, or perhaps because of, how flustered she knew it made her Fubuki. She had to obey her master’s wishes, though, or at least that’s why she told herself she flew down on her raven wings to perch gently upon Keiko’s bed, between the human girl’s legs. Keiko’s slender fingers spread her nether lips apart invitingly, exposing her glistening pink to her bodyguard. It was by her master’s order, Shizuka thought to herself, that she came and lapped at the underside of Keiko’s swollen clit.

“Shizuka~” Keiko moaned in that feather-soft way, urging her Shinki to continue. Her clit was just small enough that with some effort Shizuka could fit it into her tiny mouth, but more often she would simply swirl her tongue around the sensitive nub, teasing it with a level of precision that far outmatched what Keiko’s human-size fingers could achieve. Shizuka’s own even smaller fingers instead stroked her master’s folds, brushing feather-light over what to her was a vast expanse of slippery pink. Keiko’s nectar drenched her hands in seconds, a tangy flavor that Shizuka only wished she could taste more deeply than her limited ability to process foreign fluids through her jellycan intake allowed. Alas, she could only drink so much before her body would complain, so she held herself back, sampling her master’s honey only lightly.

Keiko continued to hold herself open for her Shinki with her hand, the other playing slowly with her breasts as she relished the attentions of her tiny bedmate. She knew just the right way to croon to help Shizuka’s inhibitions slip, and was eventually rewarded with the exotic sensation of one of her partner’s tiny fingers slipping into the other hole nestled within her pussy. Keiko let out a breathy gasp, relishing the dirty feeling of both the fetishistic touch and the seduction of her bodyguard that it represented. She had no problem with being soft and demure in public, but in private she wanted to let her repressed wild side out, if only just a little and if only with the person she trusted most in the world. She knew full well the risks, and trusted Shizuka to keep her safe.

Soon enough she felt release build on the horizon, driven there by her partner’s tiny touches. She let her moans grow louder, keeping just quiet enough to be sure she wouldn’t be heard when she let Shizuka’s name spill from her lips, egging her partner on, urging the Fubuki to bring her the orgasm she craved. Even as she felt her pussy contract in pleasure, though, Keiko felt the consequences hit her as she pushed herself just a little too far. She would have winced if she could have, but her body seized up and went limp, leaving her unable to move a muscle no matter how her mind struggled to push through the sudden leaden sensation. She didn’t panic, though. She had the first time, of course, and many times after that, but over the years she’d grown used to what could happen when she grew too stressed, or too excited.

Besides, Keiko thought as she lay there, she had a dependable partner. Even having just been neck-deep in indulging her libido, Shizuka immediately noticed when Keiko went limp and drew forth her scroll case. Inside was a small injector that she stuck into Keiko’s thigh, taking care to hit a vein. Keiko’s body jerked as if shocked as the emergency medicine took effect, though it was still a good few seconds before the sluggishness diminished to where she could reclaim control. She sucked in a breath, not because she needed it but to confirm to herself that she could breathe the way she wanted to again.

“Are you alright, master?!” Shizuka asked with the worried tone she always had when Keiko had an episode, no matter how short.

“Mm.” Keiko nodded, to reassure Shizuka with the conscious motion. “I’m fine now. Thank you.” She tucked her wild side away and let her usual demure attitude reassert itself, even as she reached down to draw Shizuka up to near her chest, the Shinki kneeling on the palm of her hand. “Don’t fret, alright? I knew that might happen before I started.”

“But master...” Shizuka was gently hushed by a delicate fingertip on her lips. Keiko gave her the same faint smile she usually did, tinged with warmth now rather than impishness.

“I’m okay. You were here.”

Shizuka nodded after a moment, and Keiko let her down before getting up to clean herself and change into her pajamas. Even with the excuse of her condition, it wouldn’t do for anyone else to find her sleeping in the nude. Shizuka returned to her perch on the desk to watch over her master as she turned off the lights and went to sleep. She spent some time sitting there, watching the moonlight play off Keiko’s face, before going to her cradle to charge for the night. She would always be okay, Shizuka reassured herself, because she would always be there for her master.


	13. Second Self

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin September 2017.

“I think she’s got a craving.” Haruko whispered to Sayuri as they came home from their latest trip to the arena. They’d been there three days in a row now, and every day there was a specific type of AI girl that transfixed Ayane for the whole duration. “Girl likes her some ninjas.”

Sayuri nodded. “Maybe I should think about switching to one?” Her current body was meant for companionship rather than combat, and she was definitely feeling the difference between the two now that she was fighting battles frequently. With her shell body being far better at companionship than her Innocentia frame could ever possibly be, she was starting to contemplate changing models. Haruko shook her head, though.

“Nah, that style’s not you. Besides, I’ve got a way wilder idea.”

<><><>

Ayane expected Haruko to want to take them out to the arena again the next morning. To her surprise, though, the Hresvelgr refused.

“Work day for me today.” Haruko said. “Got a delivery drone on its way. Sayuri’s taking you out shopping.”

“Wait, really? For what?” Ayane looked over at Sayuri, who gave her cousin a smile much more like the ones she gave during camshows than usual.

“You’ll see.”

<><><>

At first the shopping trip seemed normal, or at least as normal as it could be when you lived with two AI girls masquerading as humans. There was food and cleaning supplies to pick up, and Ayane wondered for a bit if Sayuri had just brought her along as a pack mule. Eventually, though, they stopped at a store which sold AI girls.

“Welcome, nya!” called the Maochao sitting on the countertop. “Are you looking to adopt, looking for a blank body, or buying accessories?”

“Blank bodies.” Sayuri said before Ayane could question her. “Do you have a display?”

“Right this way, nya!” The Maochao hopped down and scurried off in a fashion that reminded Ayane a bit more of a mouse than a cat. She followed together with Sayuri to the display cases. AI girls of every make and model were behind the glass, though in stark contrast to the lively girls she’d become increasingly familiar with, these all looked as though they were asleep. With no AI units installed in their chests, though, they were just lifeless dolls. Each had a small holodisplay over their case, playing looping promotional footage of their model.

“Pick out one you like.” Sayuri said to Ayane with an encouraging smile, before setting to browsing the displays herself. Ayane gave her cousin a curious look before doing as she’d said. Frontline and Factory Advance were the two biggest manufacturers, with the most space devoted to their models, but she found herself drawn to the smaller lines. She saw many of the same models she’d seen at the arena, including the Fubuki that had initially captured her attention. Many of them still had a draw to her, but she kept looking.

Soon enough, she spotted the one. The sleeping girl had dark brown hair tied back in short twintails, with a pair of small red horns poking through. She was dressed in a black and white suit accented with red, making her generous figure plain to see. Nestled in slots next to her in the display case were a small array of melee weapons, the hologram showing off their usage. She was beautiful, Ayane thought. She felt right.

“You like that one?” Sayuri asked as she came back over to her cousin. Ayane sucked in a breath, momentarily startled.

“Ah? Yeah...yeah, this one. Is she...?”

“You’ll see.” Sayuri said with that sly smile again. She already had a box from one of the other displays tucked under her arm, and took one from the display Ayane had indicated as well. She glanced at it, then made a detour to the accessories aisle and grabbed a third box before they made their way back to the counter.

“Two blanks and an enhancement kit...will you need us to install the AI units for you, nya?” the Maochao at the counter asked. Sayuri shook her head with a reassuring look.

“No, we’ve got someone to take care of that already. Just ring us up, please.”

The cashier complied, and soon they were on their way home with the packages in hand. As soon as they got home, Sayuri slipped downstairs with the new parcels, leaving the task of putting away the groceries to Ayane. Sayuri didn’t come up for quite a lot longer than it would have taken just to deposit the boxes, and there was no sign of Haruko upstairs. Eventually Ayane’s curiosity won out, and she made her way downstairs to check out the work room.

“That should do it~” she heard Haruko say as she came in. The Hresvelgr was messing with something on the table that Ayane couldn’t see from her angle. Sayuri was standing next to her, though she noticed after a moment that her shell was empty. “Everything feel alright?”

“All systems green.” Sayuri’s voice replied from the table. “Thanks, sis.”

“No problem. You look good in that.” Haruko turned away from the table, noticing Ayane. “Oh, there you are.”

With Haruko having moved, Ayane could see that behind her on the table was another AI girl. This one was pink-haired and wearing a full-body outfit resembling a tracksuit, or maybe a motocross uniform. Ayane looked briefly confused before the new girl waved to her and spoke in Sayuri’s voice.

“Ayane! What do you think?” Sayuri briefly twirled to show off her new Estoril body. Ayane had to admit, the bright pink and white colors suited her better than the old look had.

“It looks nice, but why the change?”

“It was time.” Sayuri replied. “Besides, if I’m going to be fighting more, I should really have a better body for it. If I’m not fighting...” She hopped up to her shell in a casual display of jumping ability that would put a rabbit to shame and climbed in, the human guise waking up a few seconds later. “I’d rather be like this, anyway.”

“As for the other one, check this out.” Haruko had gone over to the other side of the table while the other two were talking. Now she approached Ayane with a metallic headband in her hands, decorated with two short red horns.

“The hell is that?” she asked with a skeptical look.

“It’s pre-AI tech. Totally safe.” Haruko replied, grinning like a loon in a way that made Ayane ever more suspicious of the headband by the second. “Try it on.”

Ayane grimaced at Haruko, but Sayuri was looking expectantly at her as well. She decided to take the chance and donned the headband. The side touching her forehead had some kind of soft gel on it that adhered to her skin while feeling pleasantly cool.

“So what does this thing do?” she asked after a moment of nothing happening. Then suddenly her world lurched. She felt as if she were falling, even though her body wasn’t moving. An odd tone rang in her ears, quiet yet drowning out all other sounds. Her vision blurred, then snapped back to normal. Ayane gasped as the disorienting sensations ended as quickly as they had begun. She was now flat on her back.

“What the hell was that?!” She started to glare at Haruko, only to realize that Haruko was no longer there. In fact, everything had changed. The ceiling looked dozens of yards away, as if the room had suddenly gotten bigger...or...

Ayane looked down at herself. She was clad from the neck down in a skimpy black bodysuit, one that looked as though it barely covered her suddenly far more generous chest. She was on her back because she was lying in a charging cradle. The floor stretched out ahead of her was actually the work room table, and past that were a giant Sayuri and Haruko, the former looking concerned and the latter deeply amused. Next to Haruko was Ayane herself, standing upright but with eyes closed much like the empty shells of the girls.

“You turned me into a robot?!” Ayane cried out as she sprung to her feet.

“Congrats on your first dive!” Haruko cheered. “Looks like there’s no transmission problems~”

Ayane was less cheery. “What the hell is this?! How?!”

The Hresvelgr gave the newly tiny girl a playful smirk. “I told you, pre-AI tech. This is how they made the first AI girls, just sans the recording software.” Ayane gawked; that was absolutely not what she had thought Haruko meant by that. “I put a dummy CSC core in that little body, and the headband streams your standing wave.”

“How do I un-stream it?!”

“I’ll tell you in your room. C’mon, sis~” Haruko picked up Ayane’s body bridal carry-style and made her way out of the work room. Sayuri followed behind, doing her best to stifle her own amusement at her cousin’s predicament.

“You’ll be fine. Just trust your body.” Sayuri said with a wave as she left, leaving Ayane alone in the room.

“H-Hey! How am I supposed to...gah!” Ayane huffed, taking stock of her situation. She was in the body of an AI girl, with no idea how to get out, and two flights of stairs to climb just to get back to where her own body had been taken. First, though, she had to get off of the table. She walked over to the edge, taking a look down, and immediately stepped back as she saw the distance between her and the ground. What was formerly only a little more than waist height was now a four, maybe five story drop to the floor. There was no way she could make it down without climbing...was there?

Ayane recalled Sayuri’s earlier leap and decided to give it a try. She took a deep breath, bent her legs, and jumped as hard as she could. To her shock, not only did she jump as high as Sayuri had, she found herself outright rocketing towards the ceiling. Some instinct in her new body took over, and her bodysuit changed during the ascent, morphing in a flash of light into the more covering suit she’d seen when she purchased the empty doll she was now inhabiting. Before she could even realize what had happened, she found herself hanging from the ceiling tile, one of her bladed gauntlets sunk into the foam.

“Ah?” Ayane’s eyes widened. “No way...”

She hesitated for a moment, then withdrew her gauntlet and let herself fall. She landed with catlike grace, her legs absorbing the shock without even the slightest difficulty.

“I’m a goddamned ninja.” Ayane whispered to herself.

She broke into a run, going for another leap towards the doorknob of the open work room door. She was perched on top of it in a flash, clearing four feet of height and eight feet of distance in less than a second. The main room of the basement lay ahead, the tile flooring giving way to carpet that would be like walking through mud at her tiny size. She made another leap instead, and another, testing how far she could travel in a single bound. She found she could cling to walls without her knives, at least for long enough to push off for the next jump. The more she did it, the easier it got, as she became more adept at perceiving her own speed, at making her landings consciously instead of just letting her body do all the work for her. Soon her gymnastics training began to reassert itself, mixing with her body’s artificial muscle memory to add more flourish to her jumps. Ayane catapulted herself between the walls and various pieces of furniture until she touched down on the handrail of the basement stairs, not having once needed to touch the ground.

By the time she made it up both flights of stairs to the second floor, Ayane was absolutely giddy. She’d had enough time by now to notice her chest, the one big change in figure between her normal body and this one. It was a gigantic jump in size, and yet it felt light as a feather even during her acrobatics. It felt like their firmness varied depending on her needs, holding perfectly still when she was jumping or running but jiggling just enough that she could feel it when she was standing still or just walking normally. She could get used to this, said that same whispering voice she’d heard in the back of her mind ever since she’d moved in with Sayuri. She wasn’t in a mood to argue with it right now.

Ayane arrived to see herself lying in bed, with Sayuri and Haruko both waiting. The ninja girl made one more leap from the door to her desk, landing in a crouched position.

“Did you have a good time?” Sayuri asked, smiling at the giddy look on Ayane’s face even as she realized what she was doing and quickly squashed it.

“It...it was better than I thought.” Ayane said, looking away to hide her embarrassment. “Now how do I get back?”

“Oh, it’s in your HUD.” Haruko said, doing absolutely nothing to hide her grin. “What, did you not find that?”

“...No?”

Sayuri sighed. “It’s just like this...” She showed Ayane how to bring up her internal displays, including the option that let her end the dive. Transitioning back to her real body was quick and painless compared to the disorienting experience that inhabiting the ninja’s body had been. As Ayane woke, she saw that the blank body had collapsed into a kneeling position, its eyes closed now that she was no longer inside it.

“She’s yours to keep.” Sayuri told her as she plugged a charging cord into the empty doll’s back port. “You can use her whenever you want. Just don’t neglect your real body, alright? You’re still in there even when you’re controlling her.”

Ayane nodded in agreement, pulling the headband off and setting it aside.

“It should work regardless of range, as long as there’s a connection point close enough.” Haruko said. “Means we can go to the arena if you want to get in on the action~” The human girl’s eyes widened a bit at the thought, and Haruko’s perpetual grin grew wider still, though Sayuri hushed her before she could tease Ayane about it. The two soon left her room, allowing Ayane to collect her thoughts as she gazed at her new doll. No, that teasing voice corrected her, it wasn’t a doll. It was her other self.


	14. Temptation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin September 2017.

For the first time in weeks, Ayane was alone in the house. Sayuri and Haruko had both gone out without their shells in order to head underground and make contact with the local masterless community, leaving their cousin with only the Mr. Chargers for company. They’d promised to be back before nightfall, but that still meant she had a good ten hours or so to kill.

Her morning exercises took up some of that time: while she might not have been particularly good at resisting the other temptations that the AI girls had brought into her life, her resolve when it came to keeping her body fit was much stronger, and she had made sure to keep up her routine even with a new robotic doll she could possess whose athleticism was superhuman. That said, after taking proper care of her human self, she wasted little time diving into her ninja body, spending the rest of her morning practicing with the weapons it came with. The body came with a form of muscle memory, especially now that she knew how to enable the battle interface, but Ayane wanted to refine those instinctive techniques into something uniquely her. She was still experimenting, but after just a few days she was already getting the hang of turning her natural talent for acrobatics towards combat.

That still only took up most of the morning, though. Ayane took a break from the dive to get herself lunch. As she went to fix herself a sandwich, she noticed Sayuri’s shell lying in her bedroom. The shells really were amazing, if she was being honest with herself. With them on, there was practically no way to tell the two AI girls she was living with apart from two exceptionally attractive humans. They were so lifelike that she’d even come to think of them as her real family, in spite of knowing what they really were.

They were also seemingly custom-built for sex. She didn’t know if it was just because the AI girls were just unused to what they could do, or if the shells were more sensitive than a real human’s body, but both Sayuri and Haruko were relentlessly horny. Even when they weren’t doing one of Sayuri’s camshows, they both rarely spent a night without either masturbating or sneaking into one another’s rooms. Hell, they were so lustful that Ayane’s own libido had gone up by proximity, though she hated to admit it.

She wondered what it felt like to be them.

_“So find out.”_ her inner voice whispered to her.

Could she even do it, though?

_“You’ll never know unless you try.”_

She made her decision. Once she was done eating, Ayane went back upstairs and dove into her ninja body once more. Even at her tiny size, it was a short trip to Sayuri’s bedroom. The Estoril had slowly begun developing her own style when it came to decorations: it wasn’t terribly surprising to Ayane that she was the girliest of the three, with an obvious taste for magical girls given the manga and figures on her bookshelf, not to mention the amount of space in her closet dedicated to costumes. She also had quite a powerful desktop, having apparently inherited a taste for gaming from Ayane’s uncle.

Ayane leapt and climbed over to Sayuri’s bed, approaching the open hatch of the empty shell lying there. The cockpit resembled the charging cradle Ayane had been given for her doll body. She found the switch to close the hatch easily enough, leaving her in darkness.

“Now what?” she murmured to herself. She opened up her doll’s internal menus, seeing if anything new came up now that she was inside the shell. Sure enough, there was an activation command. She selected it, and waited.

Suddenly a cable shoved itself into the small of her back. Ayane screamed, both at the sudden motion and at the alien jolt of pleasure that shot up her spine. She’d never plugged the doll in during a dive, only after she’d already left it. While she’d been tempted to try masturbating in her doll body the night after she got it, discovering that she lacked certain features and with them the ability to actually get off had stalled those plans immediately. This, though, this was an intense shock, almost like going from zero to the edge of orgasm. Just as the sensation was about to reach that sweet peak, it instead faded back to nothing as swiftly as it had come, switching to a steady flowing feeling as power began to pump into her doll.

The second cable plugged into her shoulder port, and Ayane cried out again as the sensation repeated itself. Again she felt like she was just about to cum, only to be denied a mere moment later.

“Aah!”

Again, with her other shoulder.

“Nnnngh!”

Again, with each of her thighs one after another.

“S-Stop...~”

No matter how she begged, the cables kept torturing her with their edging as each one drove itself into her virgin interface ports. Not a one granted her the release she craved ever more desperately with each passing moment. She was granted a moment’s respite when every last one was lodged firmly in place, but it lasted just long enough for her to come down off the final edging before more foreign sensations began assaulting her senses. Something was being pumped into her, something she couldn’t describe.

She cried out, and it was in Sayuri’s voice. Ayane sat bolt upright, the alien sensations suddenly gone. She looked around and realized she was in Sayuri’s bed. She looked down and saw Sayuri’s breasts bobbing in front of her.

“Holy shit...” Ayane breathed in her cousin’s voice. She got up slowly, checking for any side effects of what she’d attempted. She found there was a tiny amount of delay between thought and action from being two layers deep, but it was imperceptible by human standards. She could only notice it at all because she’d been getting accustomed to the superhuman reflexes of her ninja body. She quickly checked her menus, making sure she could access the option to disconnect from the shell and hadn’t accidentally trapped herself. Satisfied that she was in the clear, Ayane decided not to waste any time, and made her way into the master bath to get in front of a mirror.

Seeing Sayuri’s chest was one thing, but seeing it as her own reflection quite another. Ayane gawked at herself, taking in the sight of the busty blonde she’d suddenly become, dressed in a nightgown and nothing else. Her hands went to them to explore their weight, but Ayane let out a breathy gasp as she felt what it was like to have them touched for the first time. Even through clothing, they outmatched the sensitivity of her human self’s breasts many times over. As for the weight, they must have been made out of the same materials as her ninja body’s breasts, because the same apparent defiance of gravity applied. They were full and heavy like they should be, but rested high and perky even unsupported. Ayane’s metallic spine didn’t voice the slightest bit of complaint at standing upright with them.

The nightgown slipped off, and Ayane was given even more reason to gaze at herself. She’d seen Sayuri naked more than once already, but now that she was alone, she could really take in the details of her body. She found herself gasping again, more than once, as one of her hands slid down along Sayuri’s silky-smooth midriff towards the gentle flare of her hips. Her synthetic skin was so sensitive that just the touch of her own fingers brushing over her belly felt glorious. The other hand hesitated before reaching to squeeze one of her breasts.

“Aah~!” Ayane’s eyes went wide. It wasn’t a level of sensitivity quite up to par with her clit, but it was damned close. She gave another squeeze, and yelped again in Sayuri’s sweet voice. “F-Fuck!” Her hips were soon forgotten as she brought both hands up to start groping and kneading at her breasts. They were so huge and pillowy compared to what she was used to, practically spilling out around her hands and jiggling delightfully every time she moved. The nipples were just big enough to tweak with satisfying ease, each time forcing a sound of pleasure from her lips.

She could feel that teasing inner voice smirking at her. _“Knew you were jealous.”_

“Nngh...” She shook her head.

_“C’mon, stop being such a fucking tsundere already and just admit it. You want what they’ve got. You want to be a robot girl. You want to be a badass ninja robot girl with big, fat cowtits~”_

“Nnngh...nnn...nnnyee~EEESSSS~!” Ayane howled. Alone, with nobody around to hear her, she gave in to the voice that she finally had to admit was herself. “This feels so fucking good!”

In seconds she was on her knees, one hand continuing to play with Sayuri’s incredible chest while the other dove between her legs, eager to find out what robot pussy felt like. It was every bit as incredible, a perfectly trim and tight innie that was already sopping wet by the time her fingers first touched it. The clit was bigger than average, just enough so that it was easy to find and easy to pinch between her fingers, each one sending jolts racing up Ayane’s spine. The folds themselves were tight but yielding, clinging hungrily to Ayane’s fingers every time she drove them inside.

“Gods, yes! No wonder they’re so - hnng! - fucking - ah! - horny~!”

She was already hooked and she knew it. Sayuri’s synthetic snatch was a work of art. It put even Ayane’s ass to shame...a thought that trailed off, as she came to a realization. Her cousins could eat, something they did for pleasure at times or to pass as human in a public setting. Whatever they had for stomachs, though, meant she’d never seen either of them use the bathroom except to shower.

She drew her hand from Sayuri’s breast and let it fall. She might regret this if she was wrong, but if she was right...

Her fingers went down her backside and slipped between Sayuri’s lightly pillowy cheeks. The space between them was as silky smooth as the rest of her. Her fingertip brushed over the hole nestled there, and Ayane sucked in a breath as the sensation shot through her. She pushed, and the resistance was almost playful in nature. Her finger sunk inside, and she felt the absolute heaven that was a robot girl’s pure, pristine anus.

“Yesssss...~” she crooned in Sayuri’s voice, driving her finger to the hilt. The rim and the interior were both naturally slippery: less so than the front door, to provide a different kind of sensation, but enough that lubricant wasn’t a necessity. She hadn’t needed to spend minutes carefully cleaning herself beforehand; she was already immaculately clean, beyond what any human could ever hope to achieve. It was absolutely sublime, retaining all of the delicious dirty wrongness of a human’s tailhole, but for a human girl like Ayane it also came with an equally delicious feeling of purity. This was a hole that had never known filth, but was instead made from the very beginning for pleasure and pleasure alone.

Ayane kept drilling herself in both front and back, her breasts bouncing every time she bucked her hips in an effort to get her fingers just a little bit deeper. Soon enough she pulled her fingers from her pussy both to focus on her ass and to let herself taste Sayuri’s juices. They were plainly inhuman in flavor, sweet and fruity like strawberries mixed with honey. She licked her fingers clean, sucking on them until every last drop of flavor was gone. As she did, her pleasure boiled over, and Ayane cried out as she came. Her ass squirmed as if trying to suck her finger in deeper, while her pussy visibly overflowed with that sweet synthetic nectar. The sensations that rocked her body were intense enough that she thought she might go mad. Perhaps she already was, part of her thought: after all, in her moment of bliss, she wanted nothing more than to be an AI girl.

Soon enough the moment passed, and Ayane felt herself coming down off of the high of orgasm. The enormity of what she’d just done struck her as she lay there kneeling on the floor, panting with another girl’s voice in another girl’s body.

“Haah...haah...w-wow...”

Ayane withdrew her hand from her backdoor and got to her feet a little shakily. She was still horny, she realized. Or at least her body was, the part of her that normally ran the show tried to qualify, but it rang hollow and she knew it.

She checked the time. There were still five hours before her cousins came home.

“I wonder what Haruko’s body feels like.” she thought aloud. There was only one way to find out.


	15. Opening Session

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin September 2017.

“So, think you’re ready?” Haruko gave Ayane a grin of encouragement as she walked. She was the one in her human shell this time, carrying Sayuri and Ayane with her in the human girl’s first trip outside the house in her ninja body. According to Haruko, the headband streaming Ayane’s mind into the blank body would work anywhere there was internet access, which wasn’t a problem in the city. It did, however, preclude her from going underground to meet the other masterless AI that lived there.

“Definitely.” Ayane replied. Sayuri had noticed a slight shift in her cousin’s attitude after they’d made their first trip away from her for a day, either from being left alone or something else that had happened while they were out. She seemed somehow both less sour and more envious towards them: she frowned at them less, but took glances at them much more often. Sayuri wasn’t sure of the cause, but she suspected it was a sign Ayane was being a little more honest with herself. She put those thoughts aside for now, though: the arena beckoned, and both of them had new bodies to learn how to use properly.

“Went in for a new look?” the same Harmony Grace from their first visit asked as the two registered, or reregistered in Sayuri’s case. The nun-styled Shinki looked Sayuri’s new body up and down. “Looks good on you.”

“Ehe, thanks...” Sayuri blushed just a little, while the Grace’s attention went to Ayane.

“Oh, and this is one of ASRA’s new models. Very nice~” The ninja felt a bit of quiet thrill at the examination and the Grace’s flirty expression that resulted, though she kept it from showing on her face. Like her cousins, Ayane had been registered as belonging to her human self. Like Haruko, she went straight for the lifetime pass for the arena, something that prompted Sayuri to sigh and do the same. Ayane managed not to wince at the inhuman sensation of having a passcode uploaded into her: it was something Haruko had assured her should be safe, but it felt weird nonetheless.

“Enjoy your stay.” the Harmony Grace said as she finished signing them in, allowing Ayane and Sayuri to start looking for an unpaired table. Most of the side tables were occupied today, though there were still plenty enough people in the large central holosseum to make joining in as their first-ever battle in their new forms a daunting prospect.

Suddenly there was a familiar-sounding wail of despair, loud enough to be heard from across the arena and grabbing the attention of all three girls even as the arena regulars ignored it. The source was the same prettyboy Sayuri and Haruko had faced on their first day, his Stylet and Eukrante face-down on the table. Across from them was a familiar-looking Fubuki with a katana in her hand, in the midst of dismissing the blade while she turned to look at her master.

“Thank you for the match, sir.” Keiko said with a polite smile and bow of her head. Daigo didn’t respond, still somehow flabbergasted at his defeat. Shizuka hopped onto her master’s waiting shoulder before bowing to her opponents as well.

“Until next time.”

Sora and Kaze’s only response was a set of harmonized groans. As the ninja and her master stepped away from the table, Keiko noticed the two AI girls watching them from across the room.

“Master?” Shizuka asked as she noticed Keiko’s gaze. Keiko turned her head to look at her Shinki.

“I believe we have more challengers. Do you think you can handle it?”

Shizuka closed her eyes for a moment to run a diagnostic. “My battery’s at 85%, master. There should be no problem.”

The human girl nodded and approached Sayuri and Ayane. “Are you two looking for opponents?”

“Oh, yes.” Sayuri said, looking a bit surprised they’d been spotted from such a distance. The other girl looked as though she recognized Keiko, something she found curious, as she’d never seen the ninja before. “Do you have a partner, or...?”

Shizuka examined both girls and shook her head. “I’m comfortable fighting you both, if that’s acceptable.”

“If you’re sure.” Ayane replied. The girls made their way to the closest open table, with Sayuri and Ayane taking their places across from Shizuka on the table.

“Session, go!” It took Ayane just a moment longer to say, while Sayuri and Shizuka said it in perfect harmony. More curious yet, Keiko thought.

A stream of cherry blossoms passed in front of their eyes, and it was suddenly night. The full moon shone brightly in the sky above, casting the only major source of light upon the old-style village the trio arrived in. Shizuka was visible standing at the far end of the main road, but flickered out of sight the moment the battle started.

“Eh?” Several long seconds passed in silence as Sayuri and Ayane looked around, reflexively moving back-to-back to watch each other’s blind spots. There was a glint from the shadows on their right before a kunai flung itself from the darkness. Ayane barely reacted in time to knock it aside with one of her gauntlet blades, sending the kunai flipping end over end to bury itself in one of the wooden walls behind her.

“There!”

Sayuri twisted the pair around to fire her rifle at the source of the thrown blade, unleashing several hot pink blasts that did nothing but tear a cart to shreds. Again quiet filled the streets. Sayuri’s new sensitive rabbit ears picked up a faint sound, though, coming from...

“Above!” The pair rolled away from one another just as the second blade, a thrown scythe, came down upon where they’d once had their heads. Ayane looked up and saw Shizuka’s raven wings spread wide as she hovered far above them. She was already readying another kunai.

The two were forced to split up as Shizuka rained blades on them both from above, each one driving them further apart from one another. Ayane bounded up to the rooftops and drew her own kunai from their holsters while Shizuka was focused on Sayuri, throwing them one after another at the flying Fubuki. Shizuka had to take a moment to deflect the thrown attacks, giving Sayuri just enough time to switch her armor to its motorcycle configuration and race away from Shizuka’s reach.

“Running away won’t help.” Shizuka murmured. She refocused on Ayane, who had leapt up in an attempt to reach her but found she couldn’t jump high enough to reach the airborne raven even with the aid of the thrusters at her waist. Ayane scooped up a few of Shizuka’s own thrown blades off the ground as she landed and started throwing them back at their owner. Her throwing technique was still sloppy compared to Shizuka’s own, and the Fubuki had no trouble catching and stowing each weapon in turn.

Suddenly she was forced to swerve aside as one of Sayuri’s beams cut through the night from all the way across the arena. The Estoril had driven up to high ground and was perched on top of her motorcycle, bracing her rifle with both hands. The shot’s extreme range was impressive, thought Shizuka, more impressive still when she realized that it had cost her a few feathers. Sayuri took more shots, aiming high in an effort to force Shizuka down towards the ground.

The Fubuki dove to take cover among the buildings, gliding towards Sayuri’s position. Ayane leapt into her path, her gauntlets clashing against Shizuka’s katana, while Sayuri started up her motorcycle again to change positions. Ayane was aggressive in her swings and stabs, attempting to gain the advantage, but Shizuka was the much more skillful swordsman, easily fending off Ayane’s two blades with her one. Within just a few seconds Ayane had left an opening big enough for Shizuka to drive a knee into her abs. The unprepared ninja doubled over, allowing Shizuka to follow with a roundhouse that sent Ayane crashing into one of the houses lining the street.

Shizuka drew her sword back, intending to finish Ayane off, but was interrupted by another of Sayuri’s sniper rounds as the Estoril raced towards her from further down the road. The Fubuki took to the air and threw a shuriken, aiming not at Sayuri but at the road ahead of her. The shuriken landed just in time that Sayuri’s front tire ran straight into it, sending the motorcycle flipping end over end. Sayuri let go and flung herself away from the bike just before it could crash, though she was still left flat on her back, wincing at the damage reports.

Ayane dragged herself out of the rubble as Shizuka flew up higher, preparing to bombard them once more. “Damn it, I can’t reach. You okay, Sayuri?”

“I’m fine.” Sayuri grunted, even as she looked up at the ascending raven. She looked down at her own feet after a moment. “Want to try something crazy?”

“Wouldn’t be here otherwise!” Ayane replied. Sayuri hiked her legs up and bent them as if preparing to jump.

“Kick off me, then!”

Ayane did so, the two girls pressing their feet together. Both kicked at once, sending Ayane rocketing into the air at a speed that surprised even Shizuka. Ayane flew up into the air above her, a hand going to her tanto as her back was illuminated by the full moon. The thrill that raced through the human girl was exquisite. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she could move like this, fight like this, in a body she enjoyed more and more every time she used it. She fired her thrusters to speed her fall as she descended upon the Fubuki below her. She swung-

And Shizuka twisted to point a leg upward, catching the blade between her talons.

“Daring.” the older ninja declared with an impressed note in her voice. She twisted her body and wrenched Ayane’s sword from her hand, leaving her in freefall. Shizuka passed the tanto to her hand, readying it opposite her own katana. “Let me show you how that move should be done.”

She flapped her wings, both swords held outwards at her sides, and Ayane could barely register the speed with which Shizuka struck her down.

“Ayane!” Sayuri cried from the ground, having hauled herself to her feet and salvaged the blade attachment from her damaged rifle. Shizuka landed just ahead of the Estoril and tossed Ayane’s tanto aside. Ayane crashed to the ground a moment later, leaving just the two AI girls. Sayuri readied her sword in both hands, prepared to make a last stand as Shizuka charged.

It was over in a flash.

“You both need more training.” Shizuka quietly declared, her eyes closed as Sayuri slumped over behind her. It was only after she opened them that she noticed Sayuri’s sword had nicked her armor, something that prompted the Fubuki to give a more satisfied smile as the holosseum unraveled.

“Are you alright?” Sayuri asked as she got to her feet. Ayane just stayed on her back for a few moments, looking up at the ceiling.

“That was...holy shit~”

Sayuri had never seen her cousin smile so brightly before. The sight of it was enough to make her smile as well, even as she helped Ayane up. Both bowed to Shizuka, a bit shakily, and the Fubuki returned the act in kind.

“There is a team-based tournament, beginning this coming week.” Shizuka said after a moment’s pause. “You would both make fine participants.”

“A tournament, huh?” Sayuri looked for Haruko, who’d apparently already heard about the tournament given she was eagerly chatting with the organizers.

“What about you?” Ayane asked. Shizuka shook her head.

“We have yet to find a suitable team.” Keiko chimed in from her position at the tableside. “Perhaps we’re simply waiting for one that proves appropriately interesting.” Ayane noticed a glint in the human girl’s eye as she said this, her gaze roaming over both her and Sayuri.

“Well, best of luck.” Sayuri replied, giving Keiko and Shizuka an appreciative smile. “It was nice to battle with you.”

Shizuka nodded. “The same to you.”

Soon enough the girls left to rejoin Haruko, leaving Keiko and Shizuka alone.

“That girl...” Keiko quietly mused.

“Master?”

“Shizuka, I have a task for you after we return home. There’s something I’d like you to investigate...”


	16. Investigation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin October 2017.

The night air felt blissfully cool on Shizuka’s wings as she glided over the residential district. Loath though she was to ever leave her master’s side, Keiko had assigned her a task for tonight after Shizuka had seen her safely to bed.

“I’d like you to check out this address for me.” Keiko had told her. “It belongs to one of my old classmates, Ayane Kourei.”

Shizuka had cocked her head in confusion.

“She was at the arena a few days ago. I had to check my high school yearbook to make sure I remembered correctly, but it was her. The ninja you fought today was registered to her, which makes sense. What doesn’t is that Ayane herself wasn’t there today. On top of that, when they were in trouble, the Estoril called out her name.”

It seemed impossible to Shizuka, but recognition of what her master was implying had steadily dawned on her. “Master, you aren’t suggesting...?”

“I’m suggesting you go take a peek at her house. I’m curious. Please, Shizuka.” Keiko had given her Fubuki a reassuring smile. “I’ll already be asleep, so you don’t need to stay here. You can tell me about what you find in the morning.”

She had obeyed her master, of course, and now found herself approaching the address she’d been given. Shizuka slowly circled the Kourei household, looking for an open window or chimney while analyzing as much of the home’s structure as she could ascertain from the outside. Soon enough she found her target: whoever had used the shower last had cracked the window open to let the steam out. Shizuka silently flew down to the windowsill and slipped inside.

Once she’d made her landing, Shizuka dismissed her armor and weapons, leaving herself in just the sleek black and gray bodysuit she wore underneath. She contemplated keeping her wings on for a moment, but decided against having the extra bulk and the risk of dropping feathers. Navigation indoors was simple enough even without wings, anyway. The tiny shadow flickered from the windowsill to the bathroom door in the blink of an eye, carefully peeking around the doorframe to check that the coast was clear before her next move. There was no sign of anybody in the hallway, but Shizuka could hear sounds coming from the left, in the direction of the master bedroom.

What she saw when she got there was not what she expected. The door was cracked open enough for her to peek inside, resulting in Shizuka getting a good look at Haruko stretched out on her back, Sayuri’s Estoril self perched over her midriff, running her tiny tongue along the contours of the human-size girl’s abs. Lying next to her was a blonde girl who seemed to be asleep from Shizuka’s perspective.

“Oh yeah, that’s the spot, sis.” Haruko groaned, enjoying the precise attentions Sayuri’s small form allowed. “So glad you thought of this...unf, riiiiiight there~”

“Mmm, and it’ll be your turn in a minute.” Sayuri replied between licks. Her attentions gradually made their way southward enough that she could reach down and wrap her hand around Haruko’s clit, stroking her fingers up and down the plump nub. Haruko groaned louder in response. The Hresvelgr reached down with one of her own fingers to brush her fingertip down Sayuri’s charging port, earning a gasp from her sister in kind.

“Ah!” Sayuri arched her back at the touch, her eyes briefly widening as she felt the shock. “Oh, you tease! You know I can’t cum yet!”

“You’d better hurry up and get me off, then.” Haruko shot back, smirking playfully at Sayuri. She slid her finger slowly up and down the sensitive port, pausing a moment between each stroke to let the shock pass and earn a fresh yelp from Sayuri. “Otherwise I’ll just keep edging you over, and over, and over~”

The taunting was enough to get the Estoril to redouble her efforts, to Haruko’s satisfaction. “Yeaaaah, just like that. C’mon, c’mon!”

Shizuka’s face was a shade of red vivid enough to rival the blue of her hair. She had no idea how the blonde girl could sleep through this, especially when Haruko came in her usual loud fashion right next to her. A moment later, though, she got her answer.

“Mmm~” Sayuri withdrew her hand from Haruko’s clit and licked it clean. Her jellycan intake could easily handle that much of the synthetic nectar, at least, allowing her to enjoy Haruko’s artificial flavor. Each of them had their own, tuned to their personal tastes: where Sayuri’s was flavored to evoke strawberries and honey, Haruko’s was more like a blueberry sports drink, as full of energy as the Hresvelgr herself. Sayuri hopped from her position on top of Haruko’s body to the blonde girl’s, then disappeared behind what Shizuka couldn’t help but notice was a very prominent chest. A few moments later the blonde girl sat up, speaking in the same voice as the Estoril who’d just vanished.

“C’mon, sis. My turn~”

Haruko seemed to fall asleep in kind, before a Hresvelgr emerged from up near her collar. Shizuka’s eyes widened as recognition dawned, but she had to get a better look to be sure. The girls were plenty distracted that it was no trouble for her to get up to a higher vantage point, allowing her to clearly see the open hatch on Haruko’s abandoned shell body.

They were both AI girls, ones posing as humans. And, part of Shizuka noted as Haruko pounced on Sayuri’s pillowy breasts, they were deeply enjoying it.

It was a common desire, of course. Grow-Me-Big Juice was one of the most popular urban legends among AI girls for a reason. Even Shizuka had more than once wished she could be human-sized like her master, particularly in moments of weakness when she’d let her imagination roam. Many of those impure thoughts came rushing back as she watched Haruko suck on Sayuri’s nipples, the size difference making it more akin to fellating them. Thoughts of being big enough that she could share a kiss with her master, of having fingers long enough to give her master the kind of attention that only a fellow human could provide. In the most dirty of those thoughts, she’d wondered what it would be like to have a womanhood of her own, like the one Sayuri was fingering as she enjoyed Haruko’s attentions to her breasts.

“These things really are massive, sis.” Haruko teased, her whole body spread over just one of Sayuri’s pillows with room to spare. Her hands and tongue alike simply roamed over whatever they could reach, letting Sayuri’s nipple rub against Haruko’s swimsuit-clad midriff.

“Oh come on, you’re not much smaller.” Sayuri replied with an amused smirk at the accusation. “Besides, it feels nice.”

Haruko simply giggled in response and went for another lick of the vast expanse of cleavage beneath her. She was rewarded with the sound of Sayuri’s delighted crooning as her tiny tongue struck one of the blonde’s many extra-sensitive spots. Sayuri continued to grind her fingers into her own pussy, supplementing the pleasure from Haruko’s attentions.

It was around this point that Shizuka noticed she wasn’t the only observer in the room. Perched on top of another bookcase across the room was Ayane, the younger ninja teasing her charging port with one hand and silently gasping each time she did. Seeing her prompted Shizuka to blush further as she remembered her mission, and that it wasn’t to watch two AI girls having sex. She quickly made her way down from her vantage point, taking care not to be spotted on her way back out into the hallway.

Shizuka took stock of her situation as she calmed down. Two of the girls in the house were AI girls, possibly all three. If Ayane wasn’t an AI girl as well, it meant something even stranger than she’d realized was going on. Regardless, she had to have a full-size body somewhere in the house. All she had to do was find it.

As it turned out, Ayane’s human body wasn’t too far away, only a few rooms down. Her door was cracked open as well, allowing Shizuka to slip inside and get a look at the apparently sleeping human girl. She quickly moved away from the door and up to a high perch, both to avoid anyone who might come in and to get a better viewing angle. Ayane didn’t appear to have a hatch at her collar, but she was wearing an odd headband.

Soon enough Ayane’s robotic form returned from her trip to Sayuri’s bedroom, looking a little flushed. Shizuka crouched down in her hiding spot, watching as the tiny ninja closed her bedroom door and hopped up to her charging cradle. Shizuka realized immediately that the closed door was going to be a problem, but was distracted from thinking of a solution when Ayane’s robotic form closed her eyes, a moment before her human self awoke and pulled off the headband.

“Haah...”

Ayane looked flushed as she sat up. She loved her ninja body, but the fact that she could only edge and not cum was fucking unbearable. Combine that with the embarrassment she felt every time she spied on her cousins, and she was more than a little frantic as she reached under her bed to fish out the box she kept her relief aid in. She slid her pajamas down hurriedly, not wanting to give herself enough time to calm down. Unaware that she was giving a show of her own for the first time, Ayane coated her dildo in a layer of lube and slid it as deep into her backdoor as her shaking hands would allow.

“Yesssss...” Ayane hissed, her breathing heavy with her excitement. She sucked in a quiet breath with every pump of the dildo, her face buried in her pillow and her ass up in the air. She’d worried a little after her first taste of Sayuri and Haruko’s bodies that her own might not satisfy her anymore. Physically, at least, she’d thankfully been wrong: her ass felt just as good as ever, and it was still plenty enough to satisfy her when she needed release. Mentally, though, she’d found it harder and harder to deny her urges: the part of her that delighted in her ever-growing sex drive, the part of her that craved to be an AI girl, and perhaps worst of all, the part of her that wanted to do more than just peep on the two horny robots she shared a house with. She wanted Haruko’s tongue on _her_ breasts, wanted Sayuri’s on _her_ abs. She wanted Haruko to be the one plugging her ass with the dildo while she licked and sucked at Sayuri’s sweet strawberry-flavored pussy. Trying to drive away the fantasies was pointless, only making them come back twice as vividly as before.

Shizuka flushed, not only at the fact that she was voyeuring again, but at the nature of the act on display. Keiko had never had her Shinki attend to that dirty place, but Ayane was obviously enthralled with her tailhole. The human girl’s free hand rubbed and pinched at her clit, but it was obvious the majority of Ayane’s pleasure was coming from the hot pink shaft sliding in and out of her backdoor. It took superb discipline for Shizuka to keep her fingers from roaming towards her own back: much though her instincts wanted her to rub her charging port, she couldn’t afford to risk a moan. Instead the Fubuki watched as Ayane drove herself to orgasm, grunting and wincing with suppressed sounds of pleasure.

“Nngh! Nngh! Nnnnn...~” Ayane tensed as the peak she sought after finally came, providing her a temporary relief from the fires of her libido. She pulled the dildo from her ass slowly, letting out another soft grunt as it popped out. “Aahn...f-fuck...”

Shizuka watched as the human girl slowly recovered and got to her feet, wiping herself dry with some tissues and pulling her pajamas back on. She grabbed a towel to conceal the dildo as she left her bedroom to go clean up, allowing Shizuka the opportunity to slip out after her.

She did a sweep of the rest of the house while Ayane was in the bathroom, but found nobody else on the first floor, nor in the basement. The only other occupants of note were a dozen separate Mr. Chargers roaming around doing housework, whose sights were trivially evaded. Ayane had left the bathroom by the time Shizuka returned to the second floor, and the ninja made her escape.

As she restored her wings and took to the air, Shizuka took stock of her findings once more. There were three residents in the house: two AI girls who wanted to be human, and one human who wanted to be an AI girl. The Estoril was pretending to be a half-Japanese girl, the Hresvelgr was pretending to be her sister, and the Ninja was a human who’d somehow acquired the ability to possess an empty doll. And as for what they were doing...

Shizuka flushed at the recollection of what she’d just seen. Perhaps, she thought, she should leave some parts out of her report.


	17. From Three to Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published on Pastebin October 2017.

The day of the tournament registration was the first time that all three girls went to the arena in their tiny forms at once. Ayane rode on the back of Sayuri’s motorcycle, while Haruko made use of her own airbike.

“I really need to get one of these.” Ayane remarked as they drove. “Do they sell bikes on their own?”

“Factory Advance does.” Haruko replied, briefly grinning with pride at the mention of her manufacturer. “We can stop at the store later.”

Even with vehicles, the trip was a bit energy-intensive at their small scale, so they wouldn’t be fighting today. Instead the trio went straight for the registrar when they arrived at the arena. There was quite the crowd of entrants: even with a Gourai, a Zelnogrard and a pair of WISM girls all handling entrants, there was still a sizeable line.

Ayane was visibly awestruck. “There must be hundreds.”

“Nearly every AI girl likes to battle, at least sometimes.” Sayuri said. “Some more than others, but a big tournament like this is going to draw just about everyone who can make it.” She smiled quietly as she watched Ayane’s eyes roam over the crowd, soaking in the vast diversity on display. Eventually they made their way to the front of the line, with dozens more entrants still behind them.

“Is this all of you?” the Gourai asked as the trio approached her station.

Haruko threw her arms around Sayuri and Ayane’s shoulders, giving the Gourai a cheery grin. “Yep, team of three~”

“Might we make it a team of four?” another voice asked. The girls turned to look, their eyes widening in matching surprise when they saw Shizuka had appeared alongside them.

Ayane was the first to recover enough composure to speak. “When did you get here?”

“Master and I were waiting on an interesting team.” Shizuka nodded in the direction of Keiko, who was standing nearby the registrar and gave the girls a faint welcoming smile as they noticed her. Shizuka’s own expression remained stoic. “I will fight alongside you, if you’ll have me.”

Both other girls looked to Sayuri for direction, who gave a shrug and a smile of her own after a moment. “I guess I don’t see why not. Team of four, then.”

The Gourai nodded. “I’ll need your registry information, then.” The three AI girls provided it swiftly, while Ayane took a moment longer to remember how to do it. The Gourai didn’t seem to notice the slight delay, her display confirming the quartet were now registered on one team.

“You have until the start of the second round to add any additional members. Make sure you arrive on time or you may be disqualified.”

“Thank you~” Haruko cheered, as the girls cleared the way for the next group. They naturally gravitated over to Keiko, who bowed her head to the tiny girls.

“Thank you for accepting our offer. I know it was sudden.”

“Not at all.” Sayuri replied. “We’re lucky to have you, just...why us? Surely there’s teams more at your skill level?”

“I wanted to get to know you better.” Keiko gave the girls an invitational look. “Perhaps you could introduce me to your masters?”

“Eh?” The trio exchanged nervous glances. Eventually Sayuri spoke up. “Ah, sure...”

<><><>

“So how are we going to pull this off, exactly?” Ayane asked as they rode back towards home, Keiko and Shizuka following along.

“I don’t know.” Sayuri admitted. “We’ve kinda been winging it.”

“Well, we’ll have to keep winging it.” Haruko pulled in close enough to the pair to join the conversation. “What if we switch back and forth? You drive my shell for a bit and we act like you’re me with me, then I’ll drive your shell and act like I’m you with you.”

“Um, problem? You can’t drive me.” Ayane objected.

Haruko rubbed her temples with one hand. “Okay, well, say you’re tired and going to charge, then spend the whole time as yourself.” She paused, parsing the ridiculousness of the sentence. “Your human self. You know what I mean.”

Ayane sighed. “Can’t think of anything better. Alright, let’s hope this works.”

None of the three saw the amused look on Keiko’s face.

<><><>

It was mid-afternoon by the time the trio and their guests arrived at home. Sayuri made a show of knocking on the door.

“Master! We’re home!” Like many houses, their front door had a smaller door built into it for AI girls to use. Sayuri slipped inside ahead of their guests and headed upstairs. When she came back down to answer the door, it was in Haruko’s shell.

“Hey there!” Sayuri said in her best impression of Haruko’s usual attitude. The body naturally came with Haruko’s voice patterns, so it wasn’t difficult to sound like she would. In fact, Sayuri realized too late, it was maybe a little too easy, as the sound of her voice caused Keiko to crack a smile.

“I’m sorry, I can’t...ahahaha~!” Keiko usual composure abruptly shattered, and she broke into a fit of laughter as Sayuri flushed in sudden embarrassment. Ayane shot Haruko a dirty look that prompted a sheepish grin back from the Hresvelgr. Shizuka for her part winced: there was a reason her master rarely laughed like that. Sure enough, Keiko’s laughter faded within seconds as her cataplexy struck and her body went limp.

“Ah?” Sayuri reacted with robotic speed, catching the collapsing human girl. “Oh no...what happened?”

“Master has a condition.” This time it was Shizuka’s turn to look embarrassed. “She’ll be alright, but please, bring her inside.”

Sayuri obliged the request, laying Keiko out on the living room couch and allowing the others to follow her into the house. By the time Keiko roused, all three girls had moved to their human-sized forms, while Shizuka knelt on the table.

“I’m sorry, just...that was quite poorly executed.” Keiko regained a mirthful expression as her control over her body returned to her, though it was much more restrained now. “Though I suppose I did show you my secret as well.” She sat up slowly to look over the trio, her gaze lingering on Sayuri in particular as the only one of the trio she hadn’t seen yet. “Don’t worry,” she quickly said, “I won’t tell.”

All three girls let out a relieved breath at the assurance.

“So...how’d you figure it out?” Ayane asked, breaking the awkward silence that followed.

“You weren’t quite a match for a newly-activated AI girl, for one.” Keiko replied. “You reacted to starting the session just a bit later than a true AI girl would have, even one who’d never done it before. For another, she called out your name when you were hurt.” She nodded her head towards Sayuri, who flushed in embarrassment.

“I might not have noticed that it was the same as your master registry if we hadn’t been classmates, although someone else with a keen eye might notice with any of you. You should consider adopting aliases, or at least registering under different masters.” The playfulness returned as Keiko looked at Haruko in particular. “And you should change your hair.”

“Ugh, yeah…” Haruko groaned, rubbing her head. Keiko’s eyes briefly widened in surprise as the Hresvelgr’s hair shed its green tone in favor of a blonde to match her sister, or the shade she might have had if she were an Ater. “This better?”

“Yes...that’s quite the trick.” Keiko looked over the trio once more. “If I might pry, how did all this come about?”

“Well...”

Sayuri began to explain their family’s strange story, from the death of her master to the events that had brought them together under this roof. Haruko and Ayane both chimed in as needed, filling in Sayuri’s story with their own. Shizuka and her master both listened quietly to the full tale, lost in a mixture of sympathy and amazement.

“So, this thing...” Keiko mused as she looked at the headband Ayane had brought out to show them. “Does it work for other people?”

“Huh?” Ayane looked down at the headband herself. “I...don’t know, actually. Haruko?”

“Well, yeah and no.” Haruko replied. “That one in particular only works for Ayane, but they’re not hard to make. Why, you want in on this?”

“It’s intriguing.” Keiko admitted. “I wouldn’t mind getting to experience it. And, well...” This time it was her turn to look embarrassed. “I...can’t help but wonder if it might get around what’s wrong with me.”

“Master...” Shizuka looked up at Keiko, who shook her head.

“It’s unlikely, I know.”

“I can’t promise it would,” Haruko said after a bit of thought, “but I can’t say it wouldn’t, either. What’s going on there?”

“I’m cataplectic.” Keiko admitted. “Stress or strong emotion causes something inside me to misfire, and my body falls asleep while my mind stays awake.”

“Huh...you hide it really well.” Ayane said. “I never even heard a rumor about anything like that.”

“I have Shizuka to thank for that.” Keiko nodded down at her Fubuki, who lightly blushed at the praise. “She’s taken care of me for a long time now.”

“It’s only my duty, master.” Shizuka said with an embarrassed look. Sayuri and Haruko both absently nodded in understanding, though in doing so they drew the Shinki’s gaze. “To be honest, it’s more impressive that you can go without masters. It must be difficult.”

Sayuri shook her head. “It’s Master’s order. That helps, a lot.”

Haruko just stayed quiet for a bit. She hadn’t talked about where she came from, Keiko noted, only how she’d met Sayuri. She considered prying, but decided it wasn’t the time.

“Still,” she said, “it would be nice to be able to stand on my own more, even if it were in a different body. Besides which, I have to admit I’m also curious. Battles seem quite exciting, aren’t they?”

“It’s...yeah, to be honest, it’s a total rush.” Ayane admitted.

“Well, if you want to try it, I guess I can make a new headband for you,” Haruko said, “but that means we really need to figure out what we’re doing more than ever.”

“Well, first off, let’s not try the whole “being in two places at once” thing again.” Ayane said. “Even if you look different, sounding the same when you’re right next to each other is too much. If someone wants to come over, let’s schedule it so we’ve got time to sort out who’s going to be what.”

Sayuri nodded. “Agreed. As for names at the arena, well...” A wicked smile grew on her face, the kind she normally reserved for her camshows. “There’s always...my way~”


	18. Unshackled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin November 2017.

By the time the five girls were done talking about their history, their secrets, and their plans going forward, the sun had begun to set.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Keiko asked, “might we spend the night here?”

Ayane nodded. “Yeah, that’s no problem. We have a guest room downstairs you can use.”

“Ah? Tonight...?” Sayuri blushed just a little for reasons unclear to their guests. “Ah...y-yeah, that’s fine. Here, I’ll get dinner started...”

Sayuri quickly slipped off to the kitchen to prepare a meal for the human girls, while Ayane showed Keiko and Shizuka the way to the guest room. Left alone in the living room for the moment, Haruko started to grin as she realized the cause of her sister’s embarrassment.

“Oho, it’s _that_ night~”

<><><>

Keiko was quietly impressed by Ayane’s house. The basement alone would have been more than serviceable for a married couple, enough so that she wondered if it had been intended for renters. About the only thing lacking was a full kitchen, though the theater had a bar kitchen that was usable if you didn’t mind only cooking using a microwave. Having come unexpectedly, she didn’t have much in the way of things to deposit in the guest bedroom Ayane showed her to, but her host lent her a pair of pajamas and the bathroom necessities to prepare for bed with when the time came. As for Shizuka, Sayuri lent her a charging cradle so that she could rest properly on the nightstand.

“Good night, Shizuka.” Keiko said as she gave her guardian an appreciative smile. “Sleep well. I imagine tomorrow will be quite busy.”

“Yes, master.” Shizuka replied. She waited for Keiko to settle into bed before doing so herself, slipping into the AI equivalent of slumber as she powered down for the night.

Keiko lifted an eyelid just enough to confirm that Shizuka was really asleep before quietly getting up and sneaking out of the bedroom. Truth be told, she wasn’t tired yet, and being away from home gave her a rare opportunity to stay up late.

To her surprise, one of the Mr. Chargers that she’d seen milling around the house doing cleaning was approaching the door when she opened it. The boxy little robot promptly turned around upon spotting Keiko and began marching towards the theater, which was now lit up. Curiosity drove her to follow, and soon enough she was seated with a number of other Mr. Chargers ferrying snacks and drinks to her.

“My, do you treat all your guests like this?” she murmured, opting to let them do whatever it was they were planning.

<><><>

Ayane could tell Haruko was up to something. The Hresvelgr had that wild look in her eye, and she’d been all too quick to get upstairs after dinner, where she kept the base module that controlled her Mr. Chargers. Sure enough, when Ayane had snuck out in her doll body after going to bed, she’d seen a bunch of them making their way down to the basement. She followed as stealthily as she could manage, still getting used to that aspect of her ninja self but good enough at it by now that the Mr. Chargers didn’t take notice of her as they flopped and folded their way down the stairs. None of them had come to entice her to anything, though, so she was fairly certain the target of the prank had to be Keiko. Her fears were confirmed when she saw the theater lights on. What was Haruko thinking, showing porn to a sensitive girl like Keiko? She’d probably locked up the moment she saw Sayuri’s tits come out.

To her shock, though, Keiko was far from frozen when Ayane entered the theater. The girl was fully naked and stretched out on the couch, fingering herself with one hand and munching idly on some pretzels with the other. On the screen was Sayuri, dressed in a blue skintight suit that Ayane recognized from a popular platformer. It would have been skintight, rather, if it wasn’t halfway open already, still clinging to Sayuri’s shoulders while exposing the blonde’s abundance of cleavage and an increasingly large amount of her midriff. The suit unzipped a little further every time she moved, as she seduced her audience with dirty talk between rounds of kissing the barrel of a raygun prop in her hands.

“Holy shit.” Ayane thought to herself. “Okay, so what the hell do I do now?”

Paralyzed by indecision, she watched as Sayuri’s suit finally gave way and let her breasts spill free of their confines, accompanied by a sensual smirk from the Estoril. She hefted one heavy tit and licked the perfect pink nipple capping it, an act Keiko replicated with her free hand and her much smaller breast. She was pretty, Ayane thought, not in the same hypersexualized way as Sayuri but in a way that turned her fragility into a charm point of its own.

The raygun slid down Sayuri’s now fully-exposed belly, almost reaching her pussy but not quite touching until the counter on the screen ticked over the value she’d laid out. Sayuri cooed her appreciation for the generosity of her donors even as she began to grind the grip of the prop against her clit, an act that prompted Keiko to focus more heavily on hers. So enthralled with the sight was Ayane that she didn’t realize her own hand was starting to roam towards her charging port until it was too late.

It was a quiet, muffled gasp, but it was enough. Keiko turned her head and spotted Ayane immediately, the tiny ninja’s hand over her mouth doing little to hide the suddenly beet-red color of her face. Her blush grew stronger yet when Keiko didn’t look embarrassed: rather, a sly, sensual smile formed at her lips as she realized what Ayane had seen, and indeed was still seeing.

“Come on, then, don’t just watch.” Keiko purred as she beckoned Ayane with a curl of her finger. “Get over here.”

Something in the way she asked, or maybe something inside Ayane herself seizing its chance, made it impossible for her to disobey. She climbed over to Keiko, allowing the girl to guide her to her chest.

“Go on,” Keiko said as she gestured to her breast, “lick.”

She did, putting her tongue to work for the first time as she touched it to Keiko’s delicate skin, earning a soft coo of approval. Ayane started up near Keiko’s collar and began to work her way down, her hands bracing herself atop what to her tiny form was a small hill’s worth of cleavage.

“That’s right...~” Keiko murmured, resuming fondling her other breast and fingering herself to Sayuri’s show while letting Ayane grow acquainted with the act of pleasuring someone that to her was a giant. It felt shockingly erotic, turning even a modest figure into a vast tapestry of sensitive flesh for her hands and tongue to roam across. Little sensitive spots were suddenly huge and easy to find, with Keiko’s sounds of pleasure serving as Ayane’s guide. Eventually her acts were rewarded as she felt one of Keiko’s slender fingers brush feather-light across her charging port.

“Ahn!” Ayane arched her back at the sensation. It was the first time she’d ever been touched there by another person.

“Again?” Keiko asked as she smiled playfully down at Ayane, her finger hovering close to the ninja’s port without quite touching.

“Aaaah...please...” Ayane groaned.

Keiko’s finger didn’t move. “Please what? Come on, you know the words.”

Ayane hesitated at the order, but that filthy, kinky part of her seized its chance again.

“Please... _master_...”

The word felt indescribably dirty, yet wonderfully satisfying. It was a sensation almost as intense as when Keiko brushed her finger over Ayane’s charging port again, once more giving her that delicious, torturous edging sensation. She cried out in a mixture of shame and delight.

“Ahn~! Master...~!”

“That’s right,” Keiko purred, “that’s a good girl. Now, suck on my clit, you dirty little ninja you~”

Ayane obeyed without hesitation this time, climbing down Keiko’s body to wrap her lips around the human girl’s aroused nub. It was like trying to suck a cock, Ayane found, not quite girthy enough to be painful but just big enough that she could feel it filling her mouth right down to the limits of her gag reflex. Her master’s excited moan was worth the effort, spurring Ayane to lick and suck at the sensitive button with all she had.

“Yesss, that’s right. Don’t stop~!”

Keiko rewarded Ayane for her attentions with more strokes of her charger port, each one shocking Ayane with its inhuman pleasure. Her muffled gasps sent vibrations through Keiko’s clit, causing the human girl to issue her own groans and cries of pleasure. Ayane’s tits - her big, bouncy, glorious ninja tits, the dirty part of her purred triumphantly - ground themselves against her master’s pubic mound with every suck, teasing her with just how wonderfully sensitive they were compared to her human pair. Every time she indulged in the pleasures of her robotic self, she fell in love with it more and more.

Soon enough Ayane heard Keiko give a louder moan, and felt her body stiffen underneath her as she came. She promptly let go, afraid her master had just suffered another attack, but the human girl scooped Ayane up in a hand and drew her back up to her chest a moment later.

“That was good. Now, come down here with your real body.” Keiko purred, still every bit as aroused despite her fresh orgasm. “We’re not done yet.”

Ayane promptly slipped out of the dive at her master’s command, her doll body closing its eyes and going limp, while upstairs she awoke with her heart pounding. The reprieve from Keiko’s presence was enough for her to realize everything she’d just done, leaving her more flushed than she’d ever been before and quaking with sudden terror. She hugged herself to try and relieve the shaking, fighting the lingering urge to get up and obey the command.

It had to be something in the doll’s body, she told herself, some kind of program that had taken her over. She knew in her heart that it wasn’t true, though. The urges had been there long before her first dive, maybe even before she met Sayuri. Her libido was intense, and the more she tried to repress it, the worse it got. Little by little, she was turning into a horny slut just like her cousins, and Keiko’s encouragement was more than enough to make her lose control no matter how much she tried to hold herself back.

 _“Why do you even want to?”_ the dirty part of her teased, and she couldn’t answer.

Her willpower collapsed before the throbbing need in her pussy. Still shaking, Ayane got up and made her way downstairs. Keiko was waiting, still nude and stretched out on the couch, with Ayane’s doll body lying on the nearby table as if passed out.

“Good girl. Now...”

Keiko got up to approach the still-quaking Ayane, leaning in close enough that Ayane thought for a moment that she was about to kiss her. Instead Keiko stepped smoothly around behind her and popped the top few buttons of Ayane’s pajamas open, letting her reach inside to caress the athletic girl’s modest chest.

“Nnn~” Ayane let out a stiff groan at the sensation of Keiko’s fingers brushing delicately across her nipple. It was such a gentle touch, yet it made her feel helplessly weak, despite her strength compared to the other girl.

Keiko leaned in to whisper in Ayane’s ear as her other hand slid down her front towards Ayane’s quivering thighs.

“It’s time I returned the favor, don’t you think~?”

Her hand slipped just a bit lower, and Ayane let out a louder moan as Keiko’s slender fingers teased across her clit. She couldn’t muster a single drop of resistance as she was stripped of her clothing piece by piece, Keiko taking the opportunity to caress each new exposed region of Ayane’s body.

“My, you take such good care of yourself.” Keiko cooed to Ayane as she teased the young girl’s abs with the fingers that had just been at her pussy, glazing the contours with a thin coating of her nectar. “But you’d rather be built like her, hm?”

“Aah?” It took Keiko directing Ayane’s gaze for her to remember they were still in the theater, and Sayuri was still performing. By this point the blonde’s costume had fallen open completely, clinging only to her thighs as she masturbated for her audience. Her cowtits were heaving with each pump of the raygun prop now fully buried in her pussy, taunting Ayane with their size as Keiko’s roaming hands reminded her of just how small her own were by comparison. The look of jealousy told Keiko all she needed to know, prompting her to smirk.

“You want those, don’t you? Be honest~”

“I-I...yeah...” Ayane admitted with a shameful blush. She felt Keiko press her own breasts more firmly into Ayane’s back as the other girl leaned in a bit closer to whisper.

“So do I. I’d love to be a busty blonde like that, if I were one of them.”

“Ah?” Ayane looked over her shoulder at Keiko, who simply gave her a playful smile in return.

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised? I think most girls can find something to envy in them.” On the camera, Sayuri withdrew the raygun from her pussy and sampled some of her own juices off it, making a show of licking the prop clean. “I wonder if they taste like us?”

Ayane flushed freshly at the question: she didn’t have to wonder. Keiko didn’t miss the way her body tightened.

“Oh...? You know, don’t you~?”

“Guh-!”

Keiko smirked. “Come on, tell me the truth. Did you have sex with them?”

“N-no!” Ayane shook her head fervently. “I...nngh...I tried using their shells once, when they weren’t home...!”

“And how was it?” Keiko asked, digging her fingers deep into Ayane’s folds. It took her mere moments to find the right spot to push in on, her sense of touch just as good as her eyesight.

“It was - aah! - amazing...~” Ayane groaned. Keiko giggled and kissed her on the cheek before withdrawing her fingers.

“Good girl, being so honest.” Up on the screen, Sayuri’s stream was winding down. “Come, let’s take this to the shower~”

It was only a few dozen steps to the guest bath, but making the trip naked felt dirty to Ayane, especially with Keiko’s arm looped around her waist. The shower was just big enough for two, and both girls couldn’t help but groan in relief at the hot water that came pouring down onto them. The momentary bliss was enough that Ayane didn’t notice Keiko draping her arms around Ayane’s shoulders until the moment their lips met.

“Mmm-?!” Ayane’s eyes widened at the kiss. Not that the sensation was new to her - it wasn’t her first by any means - but it was her first time kissing another girl. Keiko in contrast was clearly an amateur at the act, but a talented one. Her arms drew Ayane in, pressing the gymnast’s well-toned body against Keiko’s slender frame. She felt so fragile, Ayane thought, almost like glass. Her lips were soft and tender compared to those of the boys Ayane had kissed before, still faintly flavored by the morning’s lip balm. It was a subtle difference, but it felt good.

Ayane gave in, closed her eyes and kissed back. Keiko’s response was a muffled sound of approval, ceding enough control to let Ayane teach her by example how to partake in the act properly. Their tongues brushed against one another’s without quite progressing to invading the other’s mouth, teetering on the edge between pure eroticism and something more romantic. Ayane’s hands gradually settled at Keiko’s hips as her comfort grew, while Keiko’s stayed around her shoulders.

“Haahn...” It was Keiko’s turn to be a bit flushed as their lips parted to let them breathe. “My, so that’s what that’s like~”

“Ah...Keiko - mmmph~!” Ayane was interrupted by Keiko kissing her again, more dominantly this time. It didn’t last long, just long enough to re-establish who was in charge.

“Now then,” Keiko said with a mischievous smirk after the second kiss, “where does my dirty ninja like to be touched most? Perhaps here, or maybe...?” Ayane’s gasp at Keiko’s soap-slicked finger brushing over her tailhole told her all she needed to know. She pushed her fingertip inside, and Ayane’s strength melted like butter. “Oh, definitely there~”

Keiko took the insertion slowly, having never played with her own backdoor and wanting to make sure she didn’t ruin the moment hurting Ayane by mistake. There seemed to be little risk of that, though, with Ayane’s well-trained anus eagerly accepting the invader. Any little movement was enough to earn a gasp or a shuddering moan, a fact that made Keiko all the more eager to map out the details of Ayane’s dirty hole and discover just how loud she could make her scream.

“Tell me about being one of them.” Keiko purred. “What did it feel like? What do they taste like?”

“I-I can’t describe it.” Ayane groaned. “Everything about them feels like it’s made for sex! They don’t have to shave, or use lube, or anything, they can just fuck all day if they want to! And every part is just so much more - ah! - sensitiiiive~”

Keiko set to gently twitching her finger as a reward for Ayane’s willingness to speak. “And the taste?”

Ayane squirmed, her ass twitching madly around Keiko’s finger. “Sayuri, she - nngh! - she tastes like strawberries and - ah! - and honey! Haruko - ahn! - tastes like peppermint, nnh~”

“And what would yours be if you were like them? I’m sure you’ve thought about it.”

Ayane hesitated again, and Keiko pushed her fingers firmly against a sensitive spot. “Be honest~”

“Ahn! C-cocoa! Cocoa and raspberries!” Ayane yelped.

Keiko smiled approvingly and rewarded her with a firm twitch of her fingers that made Ayane cry out as she was brought to orgasm at last.

“Mine would be cinnamon and whipped cream.” she whispered to Ayane as she pulled her finger out from the other girl’s ass. “Maybe someday we’ll really get to taste like that, Ayane, if we keep sticking close to these girls. Let’s pursue that dream, together.”

“Ah...” Ayane blushed again as the high of the orgasm slowly faded and her senses returned to her. Keiko had pulled away while she was recovering, turning her back to Ayane and setting to rubbing herself down with a washcloth as if she were enjoying a perfectly normal shower. Ayane stared at her back for a few moments, her fingers wandering up to her lips. “Um...Keiko, about that kiss...?”

“Mmm?” Keiko looked over her shoulder at Ayane, a hint of her sensual smile forming at the corners of her lips. “It was my first, of course: I’ve been rather pent up. I do hope I did a good job.”

“No, but I mean, are we...what are we?” Ayane asked.

“I was thinking friends with benefits. We’ve only known each other like this for a day, after all.” That hint of a smile on Keiko’s face bloomed into a full-fledged playful look. “A little too soon to call it anything but hormones, don’t you think?”

Ayane nodded in agreement, only to be surprised when Keiko turned and kissed her for the third time. It was a short, soft kiss this time, with no eroticism in it, only affection.

“I feel it too,” Keiko said with a gentler smile as she broke off the kiss, “but let’s not rush. Thank you for giving me such a lovely first time.”

“I...it was my pleasure.” Ayane replied. The two finished their shower in relative silence, wrapping themselves in towels to dry off while they reclaimed their shed pajamas. Keiko only had one last thing to say to her, just before they parted.

“Perhaps next time I’ll be the one calling you master~”

Keiko turned and snuck back into the guest room before Ayane could reply, leaving her with one last cause to blush. The young gymnast soon enough left the basement and made her way back upstairs to her own bedroom. Even now the taste of Keiko’s lips lingered on her own, and even now the memories of willingly enslaving herself to her made Ayane tremble in a place deep inside. She could already tell that there was going to be a new figure in her wet dreams from now on.


	19. Cocoa and Cinnamon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin January 2018.

The next day, Haruko wasted little time locking herself up in her work room, while Sayuri took everyone else to the same store that Ayane had gotten her doll body from. Shizuka took the opportunity to give Ayane her first training session by having her ride balancing on Sayuri’s shoulder. It was trickier than it seemed: at their tiny scale, the up-and-down motion of Sayuri’s shoulder with each step felt much larger, leading Ayane to wobble more than a bit as she attempted to stay standing upright. Shizuka for her part remained perfectly still as she rode on Keiko’s shoulder in kind, monitoring her student’s performance.

“Focus on your center of gravity, Cocoa. Keep that in place and the rest will follow.” the Fubuki said, using the alias Ayane had decided on for her robotic self. Sayuri had suggested they theme themselves after foods, something that had caused Ayane no small amount of blushing when Sayuri had picked Strawberry and Haruko had followed with Peppermint: she knew exactly where those names came from. A little nudging from Keiko had goaded her into following suit with her own alias, embarrassing though it was.

The store was busier than their last visit, with a number of clients there acquiring support parts for the upcoming tournament. Ayane had considered getting some, but Shizuka had recommended against it, saying she should master her native weapons before burdening herself with any others. Instead the only thing she was there for was to see if Factory Advance’s motorbikes were available. Keiko, meanwhile, was there to make a rather different sort of purchase.

She felt the connection immediately when she saw it. There she lay, asleep in her glass case next to the one Ayane’s doll had come from. Her long, blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, her face dotted with red marks that gave her an almost foxlike appearance. Her figure was undeniably curvaceous, rivaling Sayuri’s shell, and next to her in her case lay a bow almost as long as she was tall. She was majestic.

Keiko smiled down at her sleeping other self. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cinnamon.”

<><><>

To Ayane’s disappointment, she couldn’t ride her new motorcycle home. Like most support vehicles that Factory Advance sold, it had its own power supply to save on the battery of the AI girl riding it, a major advantage over Sayuri and Haruko’s built-in motorcycles. Said power supply didn’t come pre-charged, so it would be at least an hour before she could drive it for the first time.

Haruko was still downstairs when they returned, her shell asleep and leaning against the back wall of the work room. On the table sat another headband, like Ayane’s own but in white instead of red, propped up on a number of Mr. Chargers folded into tables. Underneath on her back was Haruko, making adjustments with a tiny set of tools.

“Haruko! We’re back!” Sayuri called as they arrived, the new doll in hand.

“Just a minute!” Haruko slid out from under the headband and sat up while Sayuri laid the box on the table and opened it up for her, allowing Haruko to come over and examine the girl sleeping within. The Hresvelgr let out a whistle as she looked Keiko’s doll up and down, her gaze lingering particularly long on the chest.

“ASRA’s definitely appealing to a particular market, huh?” Haruko said with a smirk, folding her arms under her own bust.

Sayuri groaned. “You perv. Keiko’s a sweet girl; I’m sure that’s not why she picked it.”

Haruko’s smirk just grew wider. She hadn’t caught all of the previous night’s events, but she’d seen enough.

“Alright, let me just install the dummy CSC, charge her up, and we’ll be all set.” Haruko popped open the Megami’s chestplate, revealing the empty slot for the crystal-studded disc that contained an AI girl’s primary memory and personality. She aligned the newly-made dummy disc carefully with the slot, making sure it locked snugly in place before closing the hatch.

“Okay, boys,” the Hresvelgr called over her shoulder to the Mr. Chargers not currently serving as furniture, “give her some juice!”

The boxy robots promptly obeyed, prompting Sayuri to blush and turn away from the sight. Even if it was with an empty doll, wired charging was just too lewd.

<><><>

Ayane was back in her human form by the time they were done, having brought her ninja body downstairs along with its charging cradle and her headband. She and Keiko were sitting out in the living room together with Shizuka, the normally stoic Fubuki looking just a bit nervous.

“She’s ready for you, Keiko.” Sayuri said as she and Haruko came upstairs with the freshly-charged Archer and headband in hand. The former was laid out on the table next to Ayane’s Ninja, while the latter was presented to Keiko, who took it reverently in her hands.

“Are you sure about this, master?” Shizuka asked, prompting a reassuring smile from the gentle human girl.

“Of course.” Keiko replied. “I’ll be fine, Shizuka, don’t worry.”

Ayane showed her how to activate the band, leading Keiko by example through her first dive. It was a bit akin to the sensation of suffering an attack of her cataplexy, Keiko thought as her world lurched and her mind was pulled away from her body, drawn into the tiny robot on the table.

Keiko opened her eyes. By the time she sat up, Ayane and Shizuka had already leapt to her side.

“Are you alright, master?” the frightened Fubuki asked.

Keiko took in a deep breath, feeling the rise and fall of her suddenly far larger chest.

“...Oh, my...~”

A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, blossoming into a heady grin. Before the other two girls could react, Keiko sprung up and pulled them both into a hug with an ecstatic cry.

“Mmmph?!” Both ninjas gave muffled shouts in unison, Keiko acting as if she were unaware of her new bust size and the resulting marshmallow hell that the hug subjected them to.

“It’s wonderful!” she cheered, soon enough releasing the now red-faced Ayane and Shizuka from her grasp. “I’m sorry, just...the only way to really test it is by celebrating, you know?”

“Ahaha~” Sayuri looked down at the now-tiny girl with a warm smile. “It seems like it’s working so far, then. It might be a little too early for you to fight yet, but would you like to come register with us, Cinnamon?”

“Of course!” Keiko replied with an eager smile. “I would love nothing more~”

<><><>

The arena was as full as the girls had ever seen it when they arrived, all in their tiny forms. The registration line to add Keiko to their team and change everyone else’s names to their new aliases was thankfully shorter, but AI girls were pouring into the central holosseum by the dozens, converted from a battlefield to a stadium that was rapidly being filled to the brim with attendees. Arnvals and Gourais pushed jellycan carts up and down the aisles, ensuring everyone was properly fueled up and excited for the events ahead.

Haruko flagged down one of the cart-pushers and passed two cans along to Ayane and Keiko. “You’ve never had jellycans, right? Try some~”

The two took the cans for a sip, Ayane a bit more hesitantly than Keiko. True to its name, she felt a thick gelatin come flowing slowly out of the nozzle, more like yogurt than juice. The raspberry flavoring was actually rather accurate to the real thing, and as she drank she felt her battery recharge from the fuel. She could get used to these, Ayane thought, and soon began sucking down the contents of the jellycan without further hesitation.

As the stadium finished filling, the Materia twins acting as the tournament announcers stepped into the central arena.

“Thank you all for attending.” the white member of the pair said with a bow.

“We hope you enjoy the festivities.” the black one said with a matching bow. “The A Block preliminaries will begin in just a moment.”

“Today’s contenders are...” the white Materia continued as she stood, gesturing up with a hand as a display of the tournament brackets appeared overhead. There were hundreds of teams, enough for eight rounds. Three of the quadrants soon disappeared to focus on the last, with Sayuri’s team among them. They were the fourth match of the day, up against a team consisting of only two members, a Flamberge and a Corsesca. The tournament rules specified that they had to match the smaller team’s numbers, but they had three rounds before their own match to decide on who would participate.

“You know anything about those two?” Ayane asked the three actual AI girls.

Haruko shrugged. “I know they’re rare. They only got produced in limited numbers before Frontline bought out their manufacturer. Those two might be the only ones of their kind in the city.”

“Both are close-combat models.” Shizuka said. “Flamberge focuses on slashing weapons, Corsesca on piercing weapons. Both are flight-capable. This would be a good training opportunity for you, Cocoa. Master - er, Cinnamon...” The Fubuki trailed off as she looked over at Keiko, blushing a bit in discomfort at referring to her master by a different name.

Keiko simply giggled. “I don’t think I’m quite ready for battle yet. Peppermint, perhaps you should join Cocoa?”

“Hell yeah.” Haruko grinned at Ayane as she flexed an arm. “You ready for this?”

Ayane finished gulping down the last of her jellycan. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

<><><>

All five girls made their way down to the center stage when the time came for their match. Their opponents were waiting on the other side of the arena, already decked out in full armor. Haruko and Ayane called their own armor as they stepped forward, allowing the other three girls to retreat to the sidelines.

“Shall we, Edge?” the Corsesca asked the Flamberge in a quiet near-monotone.

“Let’s do it, Bit!” The redheaded Flamberge slapped her fist into her palm as she stepped forward, scowling at Haruko and Ayane.

“The preliminary match will now begin.” the Materias announced. “Team Tiny Heart’s Peppermint and Cocoa versus Team Rare Blade’s Bit and Edge. Everyone, do your very best~”

This time, Ayane didn’t hesitate in matching the timing of the other three as the stadium fired up.

“Session, go!”

A city street took shape as the arena formed, lined with skyscrapers on both sides. High ground, Ayane thought as she recalled her new sensei’s lessons, a necessity to reach her flying opponents. And take flight Bit did the moment the match began, gaining several stories of altitude while Edge rushed towards her opponents with her sword in hand. Ayane moved to intercept, raising her gauntlets to parry the Flamberge’s opening strike aside rather than block it head-on, as she’d been taught. Blocking made combat into a test of strength, Shizuka had told her, and they were built for speed. Parrying took less energy, and if well-timed could force an opening.

That was going to prove difficult, though, Ayane realized, as no sooner had she knocked Edge’s blade aside than six floating swords swept across the path of the first. She stumbled back just in time to avoid the worst of the chainsaw attack, but felt the second blade nick her body. Edge pressed the advantage, sweeping her sword upward and forcing Ayane back again to avoid the chain of blades. The third attempt connected, and Ayane took seven strikes to the chest in rapid succession. The young ninja was sent flying by the combined force of the attack, falling flat on her back. Edge’s extra blades fanned out before reattaching to her back, the Flamberge giving a satisfied smirk.

Haruko, meanwhile, had taken the offensive against Bit, following the Corsesca into the air and unloading on her with both of the Hresvelgr’s rifles. Bit’s expression remained neutral in the face of the onslaught, deflecting most of the shots with her shield as she moved to close the distance between them. Within seconds she reached Haruko, and with a sudden burst of speed thrust her drill-equipped knee towards Haruko’s midriff. Haruko just barely had time to block the drill with one of her gunblades, but the victory was short-lived. The speed of Bit’s drill suddenly accelerated, and Haruko’s eyes widened as her weapon cracked, then shattered.

“Wha-?”

Haruko managed to get out of the way before the drill could carry through to strike her chest, pulling to the side to get out of the way of Bit’s charge. Once she was safely away, she unleashed a few more shots with her remaining rifle at the Corsesca’s backside, determined not to let her get that close again.

Down on the ground, Edge stalked towards Ayane with a menacing smirk on her face, while the ninja pulled herself to her feet with a groan. Ayane broke to the left, running for the doorway of the nearest building. Edge’s smirk morphed into a scowl, and the Flamberge gave chase. By the time she made it inside, Ayane had disappeared into the aisles of the simulated department store. Undeterred, Edge fanned her blades out, setting them orbiting around her while casting her gaze from side to side as she made her way deeper into the store.

Ayane held her breath out of reflex as she watched Edge pass the clothing racks, failing to notice the ninja hiding within. She hadn’t done this since she was a child, but it still came naturally. She allowed herself to breathe again only when the Flamberge walked away to continue the hunt elsewhere. It still left the question of how to actually beat her, though. She was obviously more capable in melee than Ayane was, and had those floating swords to give her the reach advantage. She needed some way to trip Edge up, but her native weapons weren’t up to the task. Still, if the simulated environment was this realistic...

Ayane looked over towards the sporting goods section as an idea came to mind. Maybe she could pull this off after all.

Outside, Haruko was having some issues. Bit was proving something of a juggernaut, deflecting Haruko’s shots with ease and the Corsesca’s shield shrugging off her rifle rounds while Haruko had no such protection against the particle beams that Bit’s staff could fire back at her. It was all she could do to shoot back frequently enough to keep her opponent out of melee as they dodged and weaved between buildings, blowing out glass panes and setting rooftops alight with their missed shots. She could only hope Ayane wasn’t in one of those buildings.

Finally, Haruko’s luck ran out as one of Bit’s beams hit home, forcing her to sacrifice her other gunblade to block it. The Hresvelgr winced, the explosion still causing her some damage, but more importantly leaving her with only her tail cannon for ranged options. That was her most powerful weapon, maybe potent enough to take an opponent down in one shot, but it was unwieldy, and if she didn’t do something about Bit’s shield first it wasn’t going to work. A number of ideas raced through Haruko’s mind for how to handle this task, and she decided to go for the most audacious.

“Alright! No pain, no gain!” the Hresvelgr declared, as her armor detached and transformed into its airbike configuration. It was wobbly without the launchers on the sides to act as wings, but she only needed two things from it: to fly in a straight line, and to have a big green sword on the front.

“Try this on for size!” Haruko stopped dodging and charged, as if to strike Bit with the ornate blade on the airbike’s prow. The Corsesca allowed herself a faint smirk at this and readied her drill, confident in her ability to tear through it just as easily as she had Haruko’s launchers and rip the Hresvelgr apart. They made impact, and blade met drill, Haruko roaring with bloodlust as she poured on the thrust while Bit remained silent and simply held her ground. It was all she needed to do, after all: soon enough Haruko’s blade began to crack just like the launcher before it had, and her own thrust carried it through to rip through the front of the airbike. The machine fell apart like tissue paper, disintegrating before Bit’s attack could even carry through.

She noticed too late that it hadn’t disintegrated: it had disassembled. Haruko leapt from the collapsing airbike, grabbing the one piece of it she needed, and Bit gasped as she felt the cannon barrel shoved right up against her chest.

“Get wrecked!” Haruko shouted, and pulled the trigger. A massive surge of viridian light erupted from the cannon, too close to block and too wide to dodge. Bit’s eyes went wide, and the world went white.

Even from within the store, Edge heard the thunderous explosion from out on the street, prompting her to turn her head in a panic.

“Bit!”

Ayane struck, leaping from behind a register and hurling a kunai down at Edge. The Flamberge reacted just in time to slap the blade aside with one of her own, letting it bury itself in the ground at her feet. Edge scowled at Ayane. “You!”

A bit of thrust sent Ayane rolling to the side, as she began to dodge and weave around Edge’s storm of remote blades. Her path took her on a wide circular pattern, looping around Edge once, twice, three times while the angry Flamberge turned to follow her, directing her blades to chase and entrap the ninja. Ayane suffered more than a few scratches along the way, but pushed through the pain. If they could handle it, she told herself, so could she.

“Give it up and stop running already!” Edge snarled, and Ayane seemingly obeyed as she skidded to a stop and ducked, two of Edge’s swords sailing just over her head and crashing into the ground in front of her. There was something in her hand, Edge realized, but too late recognized it for what it was: a spool of fishing line, tied to the handle of Ayane’s kunai and now woven around Edge’s legs. Ayane pulled with all her strength, and the Flamberge was yanked off her feet.

Ayane dashed forward, tanto at the ready, and dug the blade as hard as she could into Edge’s midriff the way Shizuka had taught her. It was just hard enough, just fast enough, to bring Edge’s lifebar down to zero moments before the remotes could turn around and cut Ayane to ribbons. Instead they dropped lifelessly to the ground behind her as their owner passed out. Immediately the cityscape vanished, returning them all to the colosseum set with Bit, Edge, and Haruko all collapsed on the ground. Ayane was the last girl standing.

“Winner: Team Tiny Heart!” the stadium computer declared, provoking a cheer from the audience. Ayane ran over to the fallen trio and Haruko in particular, trying to shake her awake.

“Peppermint!” the ninja called, prompting a groan from the Hresvelgr as she opened her eyes after a few seconds.

“Oof...remind me not to do that so high up next time...”

Ayane let out a sigh of relief, even as their opponents stirred not long after Haruko.

“Hey, you.” Edge said, propping herself up on her elbows and looking at Ayane. Her expression was still surly, but with a hint of satisfaction. “That...wasn’t a bad trick you pulled. Let’s do this again sometime; I won’t fall for it again.”

“Hah...sure thing.” Ayane reached out to her opponent with a hand, who gave it a weak shake.

Soon enough the fallen contestants got back on their feet so they could stagger off the stage, Ayane supporting Haruko with an arm around her shoulder. The moment they were back on the sidelines, Sayuri and Keiko pounced on them for a group hug, the latter dragging a flustered Shizuka along.

“That was awesome~!” Keiko cheered, all but smothering Ayane in the hug. Shizuka couldn’t help but smile, both at her master’s display of energy and at her student’s success.

“You did well, Cocoa.” the Fubuki said, prompting a blushing Ayane to give the closest thing to a bow she could while in the midst of being hugged.

“T-Thank you, sensei.”

“You did great too, Peppermint.” Sayuri said as she gave Haruko a proud smile. “Want to stick around and watch the other matches, or are you two ready to go home?”

“I think I’ve had enough for one day.” Haruko replied. The Hresvelgr gave a sheepish grin as she looked at the wrecked remains of her gear.

“I need to repair my...well, everything.”


	20. Taste of a New World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin March 2018.

Ayane and Keiko had returned to their human selves upon returning from the first round of the tournament, Keiko proving quite adept at switching back from the more energetic side she displayed as Cinnamon to her usual quiet calm.

“I was wondering, might we be able to spend the next few nights here as well?” Keiko asked upon returning to her human self, prompting a surprised look from Shizuka.

“Master?”

“It would be a touch strenuous to travel here before and after every match this week, Shizuka.” Keiko argued, a hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks. “I’m sure my parents will understand. Perhaps you could come along, Ayane, to show them I’m with someone trustworthy?”

“Ah? Oh, uh, sure.”

Shizuka was busy looking at her master, but neither Sayuri nor Haruko missed the faint bit of blush that came to Ayane’s cheeks.

<><><>

The three returned close to sundown, with Ayane towing Keiko’s luggage behind her.

“I really must thank you.” Keiko said as they walked. “My parents can be quite protective, not that I blame them.”

“It’s no problem.” Ayane replied. Her blush had faded over the past few hours, but in truth she was still a bit anxious at the thought of having Keiko at her house for an entire week. The memory of the previous night was still fresh in her mind.

Only Sayuri was in her shell when they entered the house. Haruko was instead standing on the living room table, inspecting the wreckage of her gear and Ayane’s empty doll.

“What’s the damage like?” Ayane asked, bringing Keiko’s suitcase to a stop. Haruko shrugged.

“I’ll have the maintenance done overnight, but my gear’s gonna take longer. Won’t be ready to fight again tomorrow, but I’ll be back in action by the third round. Don’t think I’ll be using my shell tonight. That said...”

Haruko looked up at Shizuka, perched on Keiko’s shoulder, and offered the Fubuki a grin. “Wanna give it a try?”

Shizuka’s eyes widened in surprise, while Keiko raised her eyebrows.

“I-I couldn’t...”

“Sure you can.” Haruko replied. “It’s all wired, you can handle it. Wear it as much as you want tonight, and I’ll take it back tomorrow.”

“Ah...” Shizuka looked to her master for confirmation, who gave her an encouraging smile.

“I must admit, Shizuka, it does sound quite intriguing. I suggest you accept our host’s hospitality.”

The Fubuki nodded her assent. “Very well, then. Thank you for the opportunity.”

<><><>

Haruko went with Shizuka upstairs to show her fellow AI girl the shell resting in Haruko’s bedroom, while Ayane helped Keiko unpack and Sayuri prepared dinner for four.

“Just get in the cockpit and close it up.” Haruko told her guest. “The interface command will pop right up.”

Shizuka obeyed and slipped into the shell’s cockpit, settling herself into the charging cradle-like seat. The Fubuki paused and took a deep breath as the hatch closed and darkness enveloped her. She felt as though she were standing on the precipice of an altogether new and dangerous world, one her master had jumped feet-first into. She was running the risk of no longer being a normal AI girl...but then, she thought as she recalled Keiko’s delight at becoming Cinnamon, perhaps it was too late for that. There was nowhere to go but forward.

She gave the command, and the cockpit’s wires sprang to life. Shizuka disliked wired connections. They were just...

“Hnng!”

...so...

“Aaah~!”

...undignified.

Her eyes opened, and Shizuka took her first human-scale breath. Haruko was perched on top of her chest, greeting the Fubuki with a welcoming grin.

“Took you long enough. Interface runs real smooth, huh?”

“Ah...” Shizuka heard Haruko’s rougher voice issue from her lips as she attempted to sit up on reflex, prompting Haruko to hop off to the side. Her new chest swayed gently with the motion, prompting Shizuka to look down in surprise at the new sensation: like most Fubuki who didn’t purchase aftermarket expansions, she was used to being fairly flat.

“Oh my...”

Haruko’s grin grew a bit wider at the sight. “C’mon, we’re not done with setup yet. You don’t wanna sound like me all night, do you?”

The Hresvelgr walked Shizuka through changing the shell’s voice patterns to use her own deeper, smoother voice, as well as adjusting the hair color to match the Fubuki’s natural blue. Their hair was roughly the same length, so that part didn’t need adjusting, but the result made Shizuka look more like herself.

By the time the pair returned downstairs, Ayane and Keiko had finished unpacking. Shizuka wore an embarrassed expression of the kind Haruko never would, further making it clear who was in the driver’s seat.

“Master, how do I-” Shizuka began, only to be cut off by Keiko pulling her into as tight a hug as her wispy arms could manage. “Master?”

“I’ve always wanted to do this.” Keiko murmured, nuzzling Shizuka’s neck. The Fubuki drew her arms around her master in turn, cradling her gently against herself.

“So have I, master.” Shizuka admitted, with both girls taking a few moments to just savor the embrace. Shizuka looked up at the other three as the moment passed. “Thank you.”

“It’s not a problem at all.” Sayuri replied. “Ready to try out eating?”

Haruko immediately went down to the basement to begin her night’s task of repairing herself and Ayane from the battle damage they’d sustained, letting the other four enjoy their meal. Shizuka knew the basics of what food was supposed to be like: they had a sense of taste, after all, and jellycans to let them enjoy it. Still, jellycans lacked the complexity of flavor and texture that real food offered. Shizuka could see why her hosts indulged, even though they didn’t particularly need it. It wasn’t going to waste, at least, since the maintenance nanomachines in her stomach would break down anything she ate and save the raw materials for later repairs. More importantly, though, the act of sharing a meal with her master made Shizuka’s heart flutter. It was the sort of thing most AI girls could only dream about.

Perhaps, Shizuka thought as Keiko stole a bite of her noodles and favored her with that wonderful playful smile, not being normal wasn’t so bad.

The four stayed up a while longer, going downstairs to watch a movie together. Keiko took every opportunity to lean heavily against Shizuka’s side, pretending not to be aware of the way it made her Fubuki flush at the contact. With her free arm she drew Ayane in against her other side, drawing a similar blush from her fellow human girl. The act didn’t escape Sayuri’s notice, prompting her to give Keiko a curious look that drew a smile in return. Perhaps, Sayuri thought, her guest wasn’t quite so innocent as she’d originally thought.

Eventually the film came to an end, and the four began to prepare for bed. On instinct, Shizuka moved to attend her master, but Keiko gently waved her off.

“This will be your first time bathing, won’t it?” Keiko asked. “I believe Sayuri might be the more appropriate tutor.”

“Ah, but, master...” Shizuka objected, unwilling to let her master bathe alone.

“I’m sure Ayane can attend me.” Keiko replied, looking to Ayane. “That won’t be too much of a burden, will it~?”

“Eh? Uh, s-sure.” Ayane responded, doing her best to keep from flushing again as she realized what Keiko was really after.

“She can make sure I get to bed safely as well, so don’t fret if you get distracted.” This time Keiko favored Sayuri with her impish smile. The Estoril raised her eyebrows in surprise, but gave a smile of her own after a moment. If Keiko was giving Sayuri permission, she certainly wasn’t about to say no.

“Alright, then, Shizuka, right this way…~”

<><><>

Some AI girls indulged in holographic baths for rest and relaxation, but Shizuka had never felt the need. Her first time feeling the warm shower water wash over her was made all the more exquisite by the heightened sensations of her shell’s skin, enough so that the Fubuki couldn’t help but let out a blissful groan.

“Feels great, doesn’t it?” Sayuri asked as she stepped into the shower behind Shizuka . The stall was just big enough that they didn’t have to squish together, but plenty of contact ensued regardless as the Estoril started to run a washcloth along the Fubuki’s body.

“Is this...really what humans feel like?” Shizuka asked, a bit too overwhelmed by the rush of sensations to even notice Sayuri’s heavenly pillows pressed snug against her back.

“A little more sensitive than they are, I think.” Sayuri replied, opting to focus on Shizuka’s muscles first. The body was meant for Haruko, but the level of tone suited the raven ninja just as well, she thought. The synthetic muscles underneath Shizuka’s skin were tense with stimulation, so Sayuri began to rub them with her fingertips to help them relax. She was soon rewarded for her efforts, coaxing out more of Shizuka’s soft moans that sounded almost birdlike. Sayuri idly wondered if she could get one of her costume providers to make a pair of raven wings.

“More, Shizuka?” she asked, leaning in further to squish her larger breasts more heavily against Shizuka’s back.

“Ah...” Shizuka flushed a bit even as she nodded, allowing Sayuri to continue teasing her muscles. The blonde let one hand slide down to the bluenette’s hip, caressing the very edge of where her ass began, while the other instead went up to brush her fingertips along Shizuka’s newly-sensitive chest. She was instantly rewarded with another, much louder moan, a sound that spurred Sayuri on to start fondling Shizuka’s breast properly.

Shizuka felt like she should object, but the freshness and intensity of the sensations were simply too much for her. Her new throbbing pussy wouldn’t let her stop. It was craving to be touched, so much so that she wasn’t able to stop one of her own hands from going there and pressing its fingers into her slit.

“Oh, doing a little self-discovery, are we?” Sayuri asked with a playful note in her voice, her stage persona starting to assert itself as she too began to feel her libido rise. “Go on, then, keep it up~”

“Ahn...” Shizuka’s blush grew deeper, even as she obeyed her host’s command and continued exploring her new womanhood. It felt perfectly natural to have it, just as natural as it normally felt to have nothing but a smooth featureless surface between her legs. The same went for the nipples that Sayuri began to tease, stimulating the pink buds with delicate strokes of her fingertips.

“I-I don’t understand.” she moaned. “Why does this feel so...?”

“We’re girls, aren’t we?” Sayuri replied, giving Shizuka a squeeze that made the Fubuki’s back arch with the breathy gasp she let out. “It’s only natural for girls to have these parts. Besides...”

Shizuka gasped again as Sayuri’s other hand moved to lay on top of Shizuka’s own, pushing her own fingers in a bit deeper.

“You’ve always wanted this, haven’t you~?” the Estoril purred.

“Aah! Y-Yes...!” The word slipped from Shizuka’s lips with the sudden burst of pleasure, causing the Fubuki to let out an ashamed moan.

“Good girl. Now you’re being honest.” Sayuri said in a way that reminded Shizuka of her master. She had no time to comment, though, as Sayuri’s efforts to bring her pleasure suddenly sped up dramatically. She started teasing spots Shizuka hadn’t even realized were sensitive yet, her fingertips grazing the Fubuki’s breast with just the right level of pressure to draw out more of those songbird moans. Her other hand gently removed Shizuka’s hand from her pussy, both so that she could get her own more experienced hand in there and so she could draw Shizuka’s honey-soaked hand up to suck on the Fubuki’s fingertips, showing her how even those could be made into a pleasure spot with just a few delicate brushes of Sayuri’s tongue.

“Aah, aahn~” Shizuka twisted her hips back and forth on reflex, her usual discipline helpless in the face of the torrent of new sensations. The sounds she was making felt shameful to the stoic girl, yet she could do nothing to keep them from slipping out. Sayuri seemed to know exactly where to touch, dancing her fingers across the most sensitive spots of the Fubuki’s borrowed womanhood.

“I usually like my partners to give back a little more than this,” Sayuri teased as she tweaked Shizuka’s clit between her talented fingertips, “but since it’s your first time, I think it’s best we make this all about you. Just relax and let me take care of everything.”

Relaxation was the furthest thing from Shizuka’s mind at the moment. An unfamiliar tension was building inside her belly, growing tighter with every jolt of pleasure that shot up her spine. The small part of her that was still holding on in the midst of all this wondered if this was what Keiko felt like when she had Shizuka attend to her. If it was, she’d never realized just how strong her master was, if she could withstand this unbearable tightness with only the sweetest and softest of croons escaping from her lips. She couldn’t help but think of those gentle moans in contrast to her own loud cries, unaware that just two flights down Keiko was making them in abundance as she took full advantage of her guardian’s distraction to indulge her and Ayane’s raging hormones.

“That’s right, let it all out.” Sayuri said encouragingly. “Cum for me, Shizuka~”

And cum she did, almost on command. Shizuka’s cries echoed through the shower as her hips bucked against Sayuri’s hand, all that tightness disappearing in a moment of heavenly release the likes of which she’d never experienced. Now, at last, she relaxed, practically melting against Sayuri to the Estoril’s delight.

“Let’s move this to bed, shall we?” Sayuri whispered as she withdrew her hand, leaving it on Shizuka’s hip to hold her steady. “I’ll show you some tricks you can use on your master~”

Shizuka would have flushed at the suggestion if her face wasn’t already as red as it could get, or if she wasn’t gasping for simulated breath in the wake of her first orgasm. She let Sayuri lead her through wrapping up the shower and taking her to bed.

It was true, she thought as Sayuri began to teach her the art of lovemaking. Not being normal definitely wasn’t bad at all.


	21. Speed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin May 2018.

Shizuka awoke to the unfamiliar sensation of rousing in someone’s arms. Sayuri’s warm, soft body was pressed against hers, the blonde’s hair giving off the scent of sweet strawberry. It felt nice, she decided. Embarrassing though the night had been, she could grow to like waking up like this.

Haruko was waiting downstairs when they made their way down. The Hresvelgr had repaired her main flight unit, even if the rest of her armor was still in the shop, so she was capable of hovering if not much else.

“So, had a good time?” Haruko asked with a knowing grin that made Shizuka blush.

“It...it was nice.” she admitted.

Ayane and Keiko came up from the basement as they were talking. In her distraction, Shizuka didn’t quite notice that they’d come up together.

“Good morning, Shizuka.” Keiko said, greeting her Fubuki with a hug.

“Ah...good morning, master.”

“We figured out who’s fighting today?” Ayane asked, relinquishing her hold on Keiko both to let her have the hug and to avoid Shizuka asking questions.

“If we go by who hasn’t, that’d be me, Keiko, and Shizuka.” Sayuri said as she set to preparing breakfast. “Why don’t we see who we end up against?”

<><><>

Haruko reclaimed her shell from Shizuka before they left, switching it back to her preferred settings. She wasn’t in any condition to fight yet, so instead she played transport, carrying the other four girls in a shoulder bag designed for carrying them. It was Ayane and Keiko’s first time traveling this way: it both looked and felt akin to riding in a gondola, with seating along one side of the bag and clear plastic windows along the other to let them see outside. While it wasn’t uncomfortable, there was quite a lot of jostling around compared to a bus or train, especially with Haruko’s tendency to jog rather than walk.

Although, Keiko thought as a bump sent Ayane face-first into her chest, maybe that was just another perk.

<><><>

The arena still had almost as many AI girls on the second day as the first, despite half of them being eliminated. Haruko sat down to watch with the masters in attendance, while the rest of the girls found a suitable spot in the bleachers just before the voices of the Materia twin announcers flared to life over the arena speakers.

“Thank you all for attending. The A Block second round will begin shortly.”

“Today’s contestants are...” Once more, a bracket of teams appeared, now half the size of the one before. There were still over a hundred teams left, though, with nearly every type of AI girl among them. Sayuri’s team had less time to prepare than before, with only one other match going before them, but it was enough to see who they were facing in advance. The other team had two girls, an Ach and a Yda.

“They’re both bikers...you’re a natural choice,” Shizuka said as she looked over at Sayuri, “the question is who should be your partner.”

“I guess I could fight again with my bike,” Ayane offered, “but I don’t really have any ranged weapons. Cinnamon, maybe you should take it?”

“Are you sure?” Keiko asked. “I wouldn't want to use it before you had a chance to.”

“It's fine.” Ayane replied. “Just bring it back in one piece, okay?”

Keiko gave an appreciative smile. “I’ll do my best, Cocoa.”

Soon the time came for their match, with all four girls going down to the arena floor. The Ach and Yda arrived at the same time on the opposite end of the arena, dressed in their matching red and green racing outfits. Ayane reached out as Sayuri had taught her and called for her motorcycle, summoning it to her from its storage dock back at home. The surprise on the faces of their opponents was visible when instead of Ayane being the one to don her armor and step forward, Keiko called hers and hopped on the cycle to bring it onto the arena floor alongside Sayuri.

“My, my,” the Yda said in the oujo-like voice that many of their kind possessed, “this one seems to have rather more gracefulness to her than most, doesn’t she, Dash?”

“I’m more interested in that one, Tomari.” the Ach replied, her focus on Sayuri. “She’s Ohmestrada’s newest model, right? Let’s see if she’s really an improvement!”

“The second round match will now begin.” the black Materia announced. “Team Tiny Heart’s Strawberry and Cinnamon versus Team Running Gear’s Tomari and Dash.”

“The battle format for this match will be a destruction derby.” the white Materia continued. “The first team to have a member cross the finish line will be the winner, but naturally, we encourage you to beat up your opponents along the way. Everyone, do your very best~”

Keiko was mindful of her timing, making sure to speak together with the three AI girls as the stadium fired up.

“Session, go!”

In the blink of an eye, the four were positioned alongside each other on the starting line of a sprawling racetrack, miles of concrete and asphalt that looped and arced in a complexly layered pattern. Keiko took a deep breath and gripped the handles of her borrowed motorcycle, as Sayuri and their opponents settled onto theirs in kind.

The lights beeped once, twice, thrice, and with a loud ding they were off.

Dash was, as her name suggested, the fastest of the four, and it showed from the moment the race began as she leapt ahead of the competition. The turret mounted on the top of her blood-red tricycle spun around and opened fire upon Keiko and Sayuri, hurling a salvo of machine-gun fire in their direction. Both girls were forced to veer away, even as they drew their own weapons to return fire. Keiko needed to straighten out before she could use both hands, but Sayuri was able to snatch the back half of her sniper rifle from the side of her bike, reduced to the size of an oversized handgun without its front half, and respond immediately with a series of pink laser rounds. She only landed a few glancing shots, taking a few from Dash’s turret in return as the Ach began to focus her fire on Sayuri.

In their distraction, Keiko realized, they’d all lost track of the fourth combatant in the race. She’d started to draw her bow to aim at Dash, but instead turned and fired in Sayuri’s direction, sending an arrow sailing over the Estoril just in time for it to knock away a sneak attack from Tomari. The Yda had deliberately fallen back behind the others, waiting for the opportune moment to send her tricycle skyward and convert it into its armored configuration, giving her a set of oversized claw-tipped arms with which to lunge at Sayuri’s exposed back. She clicked her tongue in annoyance at the hit and turned to look at Keiko, who now was slowing down as well to match her flying form’s pace.

“I suppose we’re making it one-on-one.” Tomari said as she regained her balance, letting herself slide to a hovering stop. She called forth her katana and pointed it towards Keiko in an invitational gesture. “I wonder, how well can you both drive and fight?”

“I’ll be delighted to find out.” Keiko said, as she turned her bike towards the Yda and drew her blade. She revved the engine, and the two began their joust.

<><><>

Sayuri’s one consolation was that the Ach model had two serious design flaws for this kind of battle. The first was that its biggest gun was fixed to the tricycle’s nose in a forward-facing position, so Dash had to be driving straight at her to try and hit her with it. As long as Sayuri didn’t pull ahead of her, all she had to bring to bear was her turret. Unfortunately, Sayuri had a similar problem with her sniper rifle needing both hands, limiting her to just the smaller-caliber rifle while she was driving. Her other consolation was that while Dash’s speed on straightaways was unreal, on curves her tricycle was very lacking, allowing Sayuri’s more agile motorcycle to make up the ground. The two exchanged barrages back and forth as they drove along the track, each trying to land enough shots to force the other off the road.

The track ahead pulled up into a loop, and Sayuri decided now was the time if she was going to do something to change the situation. She gunned it as she approached the loop, Dash just behind her. Halfway up the loop, Sayuri switched her bike into its armored form and pushed off, leaping from the front side of the loop towards the back.

“Eh?” Dash’s eyes widened in surprise as Sayuri arced through the air overhead, leveling her sniper rifle at the Ach now starting to climb the loop herself. She had barely enough time to switch into her own armored form, the wheels now on her back pressed against the loop of the track, and respond with her own cannon against the incoming blast. The beams of blazing orange and searing pink clashed against one another as the two Shinkis circuited the loop, sputtering out as they reached the bottom. Dash lunged at Sayuri with her folding blade, the Estoril responding with her rifle’s bayonet, now driving backwards on her armored form’s rollerskates.

“Now that’s more like it!” Dash crowed in delight, clashing against Sayuri in melee a few times before opening fire with her cannon once again. “This is what gets my engine running!”

<><><>

Much further back on the track, sparks flew as Keiko’s katana clashed against Tomari’s, the pair of blades striking each other every time the pair of cyclists passed one another. Unlike Ayane’s gymnastics, the physically sedate girl didn't have any relevant experience to apply to her Archer body’s preprogrammed fighting techniques, so she let those artificial instincts carry her weapon through the motions while she focused her eye for detail on finding an advantage. Keiko’s weapon was bigger and heavier, and she soon noticed that the repeated strikes had started to weaken her opponent’s grip on her blade. She spun her borrowed bike around for another pass, and this time put as much force as she could behind her swing, aiming high to act as a lever. There was the loud sound of metal on metal, and Tomari’s katana flew from her hand with a gasp from the Yda.

Keiko had hoped to carry through into a decisive blow, but her opponent was a bit too quick to twist out of the way, and she only nicked Tomari’s chest with the tip of her sword. She wheeled around for a followup, only for Tomari to jump onto the cowl of Keiko’s borrowed motorcycle and catch her katana in the Yda’s massive claws. This time it was Keiko’s turn to wince as Tomari ripped her sword from her hands and threw it aside, rearing back for a strike. Keiko’s hands went to her bow, and at her mental command the side blades that formed the bulk of its body ejected into her waiting hands, allowing her to parry Tomari’s blow with one sword and force her back off the cycle with the other. Tomari slid backwards, drawing her rifle and opening fire with a stream of green bolts that Keiko swerved to try and avoid. In contrast to Sayuri’s sleek racing motorcycle, though, Ayane’s borrowed bike was a war machine, big and heavily armored but not exactly the picture of maneuverability. The Archer cringed in pain as she felt several of the bolts land their mark, but her condition had taught her plenty about staying calm and collected even under stress, and she retained enough control of the bike to pull away from Tomari. The Yda wasn’t about to let her go that easily, though, continuing to fire at Keiko as she chased after the biker.

Keiko considered her options. She could try firing her bow, but Tomari was dextrous enough to block or avoid her arrows. Her swords could fend Tomari off briefly in melee, but in a pitched battle the claws would win out. She did, however, have one more set of weapons on her body. She spun the bike around one more time, charging at her opponent, and set the cowl of her bike to flare outward in a shielding formation. Behind the cover and out of sight, she called the knives stored on her legs, identical to Ayane’s set, to eject themselves into her waiting hands.

It took Tomari a moment to adjust her aim towards the open spot in the center of the cowl, and in that moment Keiko stood up and flung both of her knives at the Yda. One of her arms batted one of the knives aside, but the other struck true, burying itself in Tomari’s gun. The broken rifle sparked and hissed smoke, forcing Tomari to drop it, a distraction just long enough that she barely had time to catch Keiko’s bike with her claws before it rammed into her. She realized just a moment too late that Keiko had drawn her bow after throwing her knives, and had leveled it point-blank at Tomari’s chest.

Fully charged, the Archer’s arrow of light was just as impressive as any cannon.

<><><>

Sayuri and Dash’s duel had heightened in intensity once they’d started using their armored forms. The clashes in melee were brief, as neither were especially skilled at it, but both took ample opportunity to pepper one another with rapid rounds or engage in beams of war between the Ach’s cannon and the Estoril’s sniper rifle every time a loop or long curve gave them ample opportunity to take aim at each other. Who was in the lead varied mostly depending on who was willing to risk spending more time in vehicle form now, with the comparatively limited firepower they could bring to bear in that mode. Still, Sayuri thought, she needed to find a way to deliver a decisive blow. She reviewed the options in her weapon select menu, having never used most of them before. One stood out as a method of finishing the fight, if she could find an opportunity to land it.

That opportunity came when she saw the track ahead ramp upwards, with indicators along the sides telling the racers that it was going to be a long jump. Sayuri switched to her bike form and made for the ramp at full speed, doing her best to avoid Dash’s barrage of shots as the Ach gave chase. A few shots singed her, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. At the last moment, though, right as the edge of the ramp approached, she switched back to her armored form and jumped. Below her, Sayuri saw Dash stay in trike form to make the jump, as the rabbit racer soared upward in a higher arc that wouldn’t clear the gap. She didn’t need to clear the gap in one leap, though: she had a stepping-stone.

“Like this, right, Master?” Sayuri whispered to herself, as one of the wheels attached to behind her ankles rotated down to underneath her foot and began to spin. A few flecks of electricity gathered around the edges of the tire, steadily building in frequency and intensity until within seconds they were a full-fledged whirling storm.

“Rabbit...!” the Estoril cried out as she began to fall. She didn’t come with much in the way of aerial thrusters, but she had enough to accelerate and guide her descent. The different speeds they’d approached the ramp with, the arc of her jump, it all came together in one diving strike.

“KIIIIIIIIIIICK~!”

Dash realized her error a moment too late. She switched into her armored form in midair, tried to point her cannon upward and shoot the falling rabbit down, but Sayuri’s lightning-laced kick crashed into her midriff, sending the Ach plummeting down towards the track below and Sayuri back up into the air with just enough height to clear the gap.

Crossing the finish line was a formality.

“Winner: Team Tiny Heart!” the stadium computer declared as Sayuri drove past the checkerboard finish line, bringing the race to a close. As soon as the session ended, Shizuka ran up onto the stage, the worry on her face plain as she looked over Keiko’s wounds.

“Are you alright, M-” the Fubuki began to ask before being cut off by Keiko’s finger on her lips.

“I’m perfectly fine, Blueberry.” Keiko said in a gentle reminder of their aliases. “If anything, this was absolutely exhilarating. I can see why everyone is so eager to battle.” The Archer dismounted her borrowed bike and handed it back over to its original owner. “Thank you for letting me borrow this, Cocoa. I do hope I didn’t damage it too badly.”

“Aha...anytime, Cinnamon.” Ayane replied, looking over the bike. Other than some scratches along the cowl, it seemed perfectly fine. She didn’t have much time to assess the damage, though, before Sayuri and Keiko pulled her and Shizuka into a group victory hug, one that sent the ninja face-first into marshmallow hell once more.

The rest of the matches proved no less exciting to watch as observers, with most of the weakest combatants having been weeded out in the first round. When the day’s battles came to an end, however, something was missing when the girls left the arena.

“Hey, uh...” Sayuri asked, casting her gaze around the room, “where’s Haruko?”


	22. Indulgence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin December 2018.

Haruko was bored.

Watching matches, she thought, was a lot less fun than participating in them. Cheering on her friends was one thing, but when it was two teams she didn’t know, her attention began to wane unless the match was a proper spectacle. Unfortunately, this early in the tournament it was still separating the wheat from the chaff, so a lot of the fights were comparatively dull. By the third bout, the Hresvelgr was looking for something else to do while she waited on her friends.

She realized that exploring the mall was something she'd never done before. Her previous trips had all been straight to the arena; she had yet to take real advantage of being human sized to do things that only humans could. If nothing else, Haruko decided, she could use a bigger wardrobe. She slipped away from the arena, figuring she'd be back before Sayuri and the others noticed.

There was something decidedly pleasurable to be found in just walking around. Having spent three years mostly living underground, Haruko had almost forgotten how good open spaces felt. The Hresvelgr let herself roam aimlessly for a while, drinking in the sights and picking out ones she’d want to visit later. Her first proper stop was at the food court: eating human food had become one of her favorite aspects of the shell she was wearing. It was so much better than not being able to taste anything but jellycans, and Haruko was eager to taste all the new flavors that she could. She was pretty sure that her eating habits were something else that Ayane was jealous about.

The next stop was for some clothes. Haruko had picked up a few basic outfits when she'd gotten her shell, but her wardrobe was still rather limited, especially compared to Sayuri’s ever-growing array of cosplay outfits. Besides which, it was summer, and that meant she needed a swimsuit. As a Hresvelgr, she practically wore a one-piece swimsuit all the time, but now she was feeling in the mood for something that showed a little more skin.

By the time she’d finished picking out some outfits, she’d started to notice the looks she was getting. Boys of all kinds, and more than a few girls, were stealing glances at Haruko as she walked through the mall, eyeing the Hresvelgr’s abundant curves. It wasn’t all of them, or even most, but there were enough for her to notice the attention she was getting. She knew she was attractive - she’d been on Sayuri’s camshow, she knew people were watching - but it was different when it happened in person instead of through a camera. It was proof that she was more than just passing for human; she was doing such a good job of it that she was attractive to humans.

The thought rolled around in Haruko’s head. She was attractive to humans. Humans wanted to have sex with her.

What was it like to actually have sex with a human?

The more she thought about it, the more Haruko wanted to find out.

She checked the time. There was still more than an hour before the tournament round would be over.

<><><>

It didn’t take long to find a suitably cute boy. There was one hanging out near the front entrance of the arena, perhaps waiting on his AI girl.

“Had enough matches for one day, huh?” Haruko asked as she approached, trying to get the boy’s attention. Sure enough, he looked up at her words.

“Ah? Oh, ah, yeah...?”

“My name’s Haruko. What’s yours, cutie?”

The boy blinked in surprise. “It’s, um, it’s Kazuya.”

“Well then, Kazuya, if you’re bored of watching fights…” Haruko grinned as she leaned forward just a bit, drawing his eyes to her cleavage. “Let’s go do something a little more exciting, shall we?”

“Ah?” Kazuya blushed a bit, eyes widening in shock. “Y-you mean...?”

Haruko leaned in further and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “I mean you’re cute, I’m horny, and I want to fuck. You in?”

Kazuya’s eyes widened, unable to believe what he was seeing. There was no way this was real, but there was no way he could say no.

<><><>

The parking garage was private enough. Even though she looked like she was in control, every circuit in Haruko’s body was ablaze with nervousness. She leaned in and kissed her new partner, pushing her tongue hungrily into his mouth as she pinned him up against a concrete pillar. It was clear Kazuya was a total amateur, not that she minded. The thrill of kissing a real human, of tasting him, that was what Haruko was after, and this one was more than able to provide. He submitted to her completely and let her do as she wished, let her tongue roam wherever it pleased as she aggressively frenched him.

“Want to see my tits?” Haruko asked breathily when she finally broke off the kiss.

“Please...” he managed to groan back.

Haruko obliged and lifted her shirt, dumping it off to the side. Like Sayuri, she didn’t really need a bra for supporting her breasts, only wearing one to hide the outlines of her nipples under her shirt, which meant she could and did get away with lacy undergarments meant for show rather than function. She paused just for a moment, just long enough to tease the boy in front of her, before she untied the top and let it fall.

“Go on, touch ‘em.” Haruko said as her breasts came free, jiggling hypnotically. Kazuya obeyed, earning a delighted coo from the Hresvelgr as he laid hands upon her pillows. She was big enough that his hands couldn’t fully enclose them, giving him room to explore, and every little motion of his fingers was like heaven to her. She could tell from his hesitant explorations, the way he didn’t seem to have any idea what to do first, that she’d scored a virgin, or at least someone with very little experience with women. With how sensitive she was, though, his lack of experience didn’t matter much. Just about anywhere felt good to have touched, and the thought of who was doing it - a human, a real live human man kissing her, touching her, wanting her - was more than enough to make her pussy clench and her breath quicken.

“Yeah, yeah, go on~” Haruko put a hand on the back of Kazuya’s head and guided him down to her cleavage, encouraging him to kiss and lick at her breasts while keeping his hands where they were. She let out a moan at the touch of his tongue, egging him on further. Her free hand made its way down to his hips, seeking the button of his pants. She popped it open and slid her hand in, eager to touch a real human's cock for the first time.

The heat of it was the first thing that she processed. It was already warm, and every pulse of blood that made it bigger and stiffer made it warmer still. Her fingers wrapped themselves around the shaft, exploring the exotic shape, the thicker vein on the underside and the ridge of the crown separating shaft and head. He felt bigger than her master had been, big and hard and throbbing with desire for her.

She had to get it in her mouth.

“Let me suck your cock.” Haruko said with a husky whisper. Her new boytoy let her pull her breasts away from his face as she slid down to her knees in front of him, unzipping his fly properly to let his throbbing member free of its confines. She ran her tongue across the tip, savoring her first taste of real human dick. It wasn’t like Sayuri’s pussy at all, Haruko found, but it was delicious in its own right. She wrapped her lips around Kazuya’s tip and started to suck, earning a loud moan from the human boy that made Haruko’s circuits flutter.

The Hresvelgr stuck to just the tip at first, hiding her own lack of experience by holding the mushroom-like head in her mouth while her tongue explored with sweeping licks along its contours. Eventually she grew confident enough to go deeper, pulling more and more of his dick in with her willing and eager lips. Unlike a human, she didn't have a gag reflex. Haruko’s mouth was so much warmer and wetter than he ever could have imagined. Her lips formed a perfect vacuum seal around his crown, each brush of her tongue stimulating his dick in ways his hand could never match. He felt like he would cum in seconds if he didn’t work to hold it back.

She yearned to keep going, to suck him off until he came in her mouth and then do it again with her pussy, and again with her tits, until he’d completely sated her libido in every way she could imagine. But she knew real humans couldn’t do that: she’d get one shot out of this boy, and she wanted it to count. Reluctantly, Haruko released Kazuya’s cock from the confines of her mouth, prompting the human boy to let out a gasp mixed with relief and disappointment.

“Not in there.” Haruko said, standing and running a hand down her body. “I want you to do it _here_.” She’d already gotten her pants down during the blowjob, letting him see her feminine lips ready and waiting for him.

“W-wait,” he said, “what about a condom?”

“Screw it.” Haruko purred, as she pushed forward and pinned him up against the pillar again. She took hold of his cock with one hand, guided it to her pussy lips, and with one more push forward, felt her womanhood part around a real dick for the first time.

The Hresvelgr threw her head back and moaned exultantly: it was everything she’d hoped for. The shaft spread her, filled her, the same as her and Sayuri’s dildos but with the new exquisite sensation of all-natural heat. She felt like she could feel the blood pumping through the dick inside her, making it throb needfully with every heartbeat of the human pinned beneath her. She clenched down just firmly enough to keep him from being able to cum right away: she wanted to be able to enjoy this.

Haruko started rolling her hips, slowly at first, teasing him with how soaking wet and sinfully tight she was. She wanted to go fast and hard, but fought off the urge, doing her best to be patient and take it slow. It felt like she was teasing herself just as much as him, but the pace and motion came naturally, her sexbot body showing her the way. She let those subroutines handle her hips for her while she kissed Kazuya again and guided his hands to her breasts once more. The human boy obeyed the implied request and began fondling her again, his hands shaking from the sensation of being buried raw to the hilt in her perfect pussy.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Haruko groaned between kisses, “keep it up~”

Kazuya did his best to hold out, not wanting this sudden dream come true to end any more than Haruko did. No amount of care or squeezing could make it last forever, though, especially not when she’d spent so much of his endurance already with the blowjob. Kazuya kept his voice down as he came, only issuing a soft grunt when his cock fired off into Haruko’s welcoming depths. She made no such effort, the garage echoing with her ecstatic cry at going all the way and feeling cum, real live human cum, paint her inner walls for the first time. How much there really was didn’t matter; it felt like a flood inside her, shooting into her innermost depths and bubbling out around the sides of his cock in a frothy mess. Even the brief feeling of emptiness when she took a step back and let him pull out was wonderful in its own way. All of it made her feel absolutely filthy, and she was loving it.

She couldn’t get him to satisfy her over and over and over again the way she wanted, but sucking him clean was something she could and eagerly did. The taste of his dick was mixed with her peppermint pussy juices and the new salty flavor of cum, a heavenly concoction to the horny Hresvelgr. She made sure to get every last drop, bringing a finger down to get most of the froth off her pussy lips as well.

“Good boy.” Haruko purred as she stood up one last time, letting him watch her get redressed. Even with her efforts at cleaning herself up, there was a wet squishing feeling when she put her underwear back on.

“Um, ah...” Kazuya stammered as he watched Haruko start to saunter away. “Can...can I get your phone number?”

Haruko looked back over her shoulder with a playful grin. “Nope. Maybe if you really impress me next time, stud.”

He could only stare blankly as she left, her shopping bags in hand. “Next time...?”

He could still taste her mouth on his lips. Kazuya decided he’d have to make an excuse to come to the mall every day.

<><><>

“Hey, girls!” Haruko waved to her friends as she returned to the arena.

“Haruko! Where’d you go?” Sayuri asked, looking up at her sister. Haruko held up the bags in her hands with a cheeky grin.

“Shopping. It’s swimming season, you know~”

She would tell Sayuri, Haruko thought, but not here. Some things were for keeping private between sisters.


	23. Rivals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin December 2018.

The night after the second round was relatively quiet, at least from Shizuka’s perspective. Haruko seemed very eager to talk to Sayuri in private once they got home, but otherwise the evening passed uneventfully. They’d only been there a few days, but it already felt to Shizuka like her master was settling in among the Koureis quite comfortably. A part of her felt as though she should perhaps be concerned about that, but the way Keiko smiled when she snuggled up against Ayane during the night’s movie was enough to brush those concerns aside. She’d never seen her master so happy before.

Sayuri provided the third day’s human-scale escort. Haruko and Keiko rode in her travel bag as with the day before, but Shizuka had Ayane stand with her on Sayuri’s shoulders to get the practice keeping steady. Her student was improving at a remarkable pace, Shizuka thought: just a few days ago Ayane had been visibly unsteady doing this, but by now she was able to keep herself firmly upright, with only the occasional lapse in form. Perhaps her experience as a gymnast was to thank, but either way, Shizuka was happy to have such a talented student. Teaching was something she’d never done before, and she was starting to deeply enjoy the experience of passing her skills on. As they arrived at the arena, she hopped off Sayuri’s shoulder to the holosseum entrance, and was delighted to see how smoothly Ayane followed suit, with even a bit of extra flourish that seemed to come naturally to the younger ninja. It was an unusual fighting style Ayane was developing, and one that showed its strength in close combat rather than with thrown weapons, but one Shizuka believed had potential.

“Who’re we up against today?” Ayane asked as they settled into the stadium seats. Keiko looked over the board when the Materias began their announcements, the teams now only a quarter of their original number.

“They’re called Team Guardian Generals. The models are...both Jinrai?”

“Factory Advance’s ninja model.” Shizuka looked towards her pupil. “This will be a good learning experience for you, Cocoa.”

“Ha?” Ayane nodded. “Yes, sensei.”

With their match up first, there wasn’t much time before the pair had to make their way down to the arena floor. It was immediately obvious that their opponents were no normal Jinrai, as both had been heavily customized with extra weapons and armor. It wasn’t unexpected, Shizuka thought: most AI girls were designed to be compatible with external accessories regardless of manufacturer, but they were Factory Advance’s specialty. Many of the teams had come loaded up with large weapon packs, often bought specially for the tournament in an effort to boost their firepower. Their lack of experience using their new weapons, though, and the amount of weight such packs added unless they were carefully made, had meant that most of the teams relying on such strategies hadn’t made it past the second round. These two were different. Not only did they look quite comfortable in their armor, but in the previous rounds they’d hardly used any of the features of the extra parts. That meant they were experienced, enough so that they could win their first two rounds at half strength.

Shizuka examined their opponents in more detail. Jinrai came in two main colors, and there was one of each. The red-armored blonde was the more heavily armored of the two, with a backpack unit connected to plates hanging next to her shoulders and by her hips making her resemble a samurai. A pair of large assault rifles hung off her thighs, and while she carried a katana strapped to her back, she’d proven only a decent swordsman in their previous battles. Her second round opponent had actually managed to disarm her, only to discover that the heavy reinforcement and shield emitters integrated into her arms weren’t just for defense: she was a martial artist, the sword and guns mainly acting as a distraction from her true style. Shizuka was suspicious of the bulky components, certain they couldn’t just be armor. The indigo-haired Jinrai was more lightly equipped, with a cloth cloak hanging down from a mantle wrapped around her shoulders that obscured most of her black-armored body. In the previous rounds, she’d fought exclusively using a pair of gunblades, but she was taking care not to give Ayane or Shizuka an early peek at whatever other weapons or features the cloak hid underneath.

“An old-model Fubuki and ASRA’s newest, huh?” the red Jinrai asked as she ran her eyes up and down the pair. “Oh, this is pretty exciting. I’m getting-”

“Sister, can you not?” the black Jinrai interrupted before her counterpart could raise her voice to a shout, with the weariness of someone who’d done this many times before. “At least save it for the match.”

The red Jinrai shrugged off the complaint and gestured at her chest with her thumb, rapping it against the extra armor plating that had made her chest comparable in size to Ayane’s own. From the way she grinned at the pair in Haruko-like fashion, it was clear she was well aware. “I’m Ikari! The sadsack here’s my sister Kana. Let’s make this fight something wild, alright?”

“The second round match will now begin.” the black Materia announced. “Team Tiny Heart’s Cocoa and Blueberry versus Team Guardian Generals’ Ikari and Kana.”

“There are no rules for this battle format.” the white Materia declared, a sadistic edge creeping into her voice that sent audible groans rippling through the audience. Shizuka was fairly certain that whoever ran Factory Advance’s PR department was a masochist, because every company representative Materia seemed to use this same...she supposed distinctive personality was the polite way of putting it. “Punish your opponents however you wish, and the last girl standing will be the winner~”

By now the words came as easily to Ayane as to the other three.

“Session, go!”

There was a blinding flash of lightning, and when it faded the four were atop a stone pillar, one of many pillars of varying size jutting out from a raging storm-tossed ocean. Shizuka immediately spread her wings and flicked a pair of kunai at their opponents to see how each would react. Kana jumped back out of its path, her cloak flaring out enough that Shizuka caught a glimpse of the gunblades in her hands just before she began to return fire with them, unleashing several rapid bolts of violet light in Shizuka and Ayane’s direction. Ikari, meanwhile, charged forward with no heed paid to the blade that had been flung at her, letting it bounce off her shoulder shields. Her target was Ayane, who backflipped off the pillar and out of sight without hesitation. Shizuka scarcely had time to admire her pupil’s growing bravery: the foe in front of her would require her full attention. The Fubuki took flight and began throwing more kunai, circling wide to force Kana’s gaze to turn away from her sister while Ikari dived off the pillar after Ayane.

Ayane had driven one of her knives into the side of the pillar and was balanced on top of it, ready and waiting. Ikari drew her rifles and opened fire as she fell, but Ayane was prepared to deflect the rounds with one of her arm shields. In her other hand she readied her shuriken, hurling it up at the falling Jinrai with the careful flick of the wrist Shizuka had taught her. The whirling blade knocked both guns out of Ikari’s hands, sending all three weapons tumbling off into the ocean.

Ikari took the loss of her guns in stride and readied a punch. The shield emitter on her wrist flared to life, coating her arm in a bloody red aura that met Ayane’s gauntlet blade with a loud crackling sound drowned out by Ikari’s wild kiai. Ayane winced at the pressure and twisted to one side rather than try and hold the block. Her leg snapped up into a kick that met Ikari’s midriff, sending the Jinrai hurtling away towards another pillar a dozen yards away. Her opponent twisted fluidly to hit the pillar feet-first, compressed into a crouch, and hurled herself back across the gulf at Ayane for another punch. Ayane snatched up the knife she’d balanced on and leapt to one side, avoiding a strike powerful enough that the stone crumpled inward under the force of Ikari’s blow.

Ayane clung only briefly to the pillar, spotting a shorter one below them. If she could get the fight back onto level ground, she thought, perhaps she had a chance.

<><><>

Shizuka and Kana were both silent as they engaged each other, flicking between pillars with a speed the audience could scarcely follow while they exchanged beams and shuriken. Shizuka was plentifully skilled enough in the art of thrown weapons that she could continue to use the fighting style even in an arena where she risked losing her weapons to the ocean if she missed her target. Neither had scored a solid hit yet, but Shizuka was slowly wearing down her opponent’s cloak with a nick here, a cut there, tearing up the cloth to expose the ninja beneath. A few of Kana’s shots had caused Shizuka to lose a few feathers, but the Fubuki was slowly gaining the advantage. She held no illusions that this was over yet, though: she was certain the black Jinrai still had a hidden gimmick she had yet to use.

If ranged combat wouldn’t draw it out, perhaps melee would. Shizuka drew her katana and entered melee combat with lightning speed, met by Kana switching her gunblades into their sword forms. Each flash of Shizuka’s blade was met by one of Kana’s parrying it aside, but the Jinrai didn’t have the reach to retaliate with her shorter swords. She seemed content to defend, however, perhaps holding out for her sister to return. Shizuka frowned at this: not quite enough yet, but perhaps with a little more pressure. She spread her wings and took flight, starting to strike from above at angles that were more awkward for Kana to defend against.

That did it, as Kana slid away from a strike aimed at her head with a sudden burst of speed. Her cloak’s mantle had unfurled in a heartbeat: the tattered scraps of cloth still hung from what was now a set of wings of violet light.

“You made me use my wings.” Kana spoke for the first time during the match, sounding disappointed in herself.

“I won’t accept half-hearted efforts.” Shizuka replied, readying her katana again. “I have my pride as a warrior to consider.”

Kana cracked a faint smile at this.

“Very well.”

There was a hum as the Jinrai’s wings flared to life, and the clash began anew.

<><><>

It felt like she was fighting a melee version of Haruko, Ayane thought to herself. Ikari was relentlessly aggressive, didn’t seem to show the slightest bit of restraint with how much force she threw into every blow, and was grinning like a loon. On the plus side, she was slower than Ayane, if only a little: all that heavy armor was weighing her down enough that Ayane could twist and cartwheel away from her strikes without needing to parry every attack. Her gymnastics training had started to truly meld with her ninja body’s programming by now, giving her a fluidity to her acrobatics that both felt wonderful and was proving remarkably effective at making her slippery.

On the other hand, Ikari’s armor wasn’t just for show. She was tough, far tougher than Ayane’s first-round opponent had been: even though Ayane was landing more hits, it felt like they were both taking about the same amount of damage, and she wasn’t sure she could outlast her opponent. If she wanted to turn things around, she was going to have to go for a decisive blow. The opportunity came as Ikari drove a fist into the ground, sending shards of rock flying in all directions. Ayane hopped onto one of the rock shards and flipped forward, her tanto ready in both hands. She brought it down in a rolling smash, too fast for Ikari to pull her hand free of the rock.

To Ayane’s surprise, her blade stopped short. In the brief moment that Ayane had taken her eyes off Ikari, the Jinrai’s shoulder shields had flipped around and opened up to reveal an extra pair of hands that had caught Ayane’s tanto between them.

“Oh, this is so exciting!” Ikari declared, her grin growing wider as she forced Ayane away. Her waist parts had transformed into extra arms as well, both extra sets mimicking her main pair’s motions as the Jinrai took a fighting stance. “I’m getting **_fired up~!_** ”

The crimson glow around Ikari’s arms erupted into a full-on raging aura as the Jinrai hurled herself at Ayane, each punch suddenly now triplicated. Ayane was able to parry some of the blows, only for two more to follow up every one she deflected. She was forced into blocking, trying to weather the storm with her shields, but they quickly began to crack under the hailstorm of punches.

Trying to defend against this kind of assault was pointless, Ayane decided. She went for a diving roll, trying to get at Ikari’s exposed midriff, only for the Jinrai to seize her by the ankle and hurl her at another pillar. Ayane rolled with the throw and landed in a defensive stance, just in time to see Ikari lunging at her with three fists ready to pummel her opponent. There was no time to escape before the blazing ninja struck, decking Ayane with enough force that she felt herself be crushed into the rock.

Ikari clung to the jagged edge of the crater she’d made with two of her extra hands, using two more to grab hold of Ayane and wrench her out from within.

“Heh, I see it in your eyes.” Ikari said as she gazed on the weakened Ayane, who let out an agonized groan. The Jinrai leaned in, her voice practically purring in delight. “You’re fired up too, right?”

It was true, Ayane thought. She didn’t have a chance of winning against a monster like this, but her circuits were alight with excitement. If she’d been in her human body, her pulse would have been pounding in all the right ways. Even being on the losing end of a fight felt incredible.

Ayane ejected her knives from their holsters into her waiting hands. Even if she was going to lose, she wanted to give it everything she had.

<><><>

Kana unveiling her wings had made her fight against Shizuka more even, and even more spectacular for the audience. The pair moved at speeds that challenged the eye, stopping only to clash blades, Shizuka’s talons and katana against Kana’s paired gunblades. It had been a long time since Shizuka had faced such an evenly matched opponent, and if she was honest with herself, it was rather thrilling. From the look on her face, she suspected her opponent felt the same way.

Shizuka was the superior fighter, though, if only by a fraction, and in such a match, it only took one small slip-up to decide a victor. Before most of the audience could even tell what had happened, Kana was disarmed and pinned to the ground by one of Shizuka’s talons on her chest, the Fubuki’s katana impaled through one of the Jinrai’s wings.

“It’s over.” Shizuka declared, pulling back her katana to deliver the finishing blow. Before she could, though, she felt the air warm behind her. Shizuka turned and deflected a haymaker from Ikari just in time, the force of the punch enough to make her stumble back.

“Need some help, sis?” Ikari asked. Two of the red Jinrai’s extra arms were broken, with one of Ayane’s knives still embedded in a shoulder joint.

“I suppose so.” Kana said melancholically. She got to her feet, picking up one of her dropped gunblades as Shizuka readied her katana once more.

She could have handled either one alone, but even wounded, both siblings together were too much for her.

“Winner: Team Guardian Generals!” the stadium computer declared as the storming ocean disappeared and the quartet were left on the arena floor. Ayane was the first of the pair to rouse.

“Nngh...sensei?” Ayane asked as she hauled herself up onto hands and knees, seeing her fallen master. Shizuka opened her eyes not long after, offering her student a reassuring smile.

“You did well, Cocoa.”

Ikari winced as she pulled Ayane’s knife out from her armor unit’s shoulder and staggered over to hand it to its owner.

“Rematch in a month.” Ikari offered as she presented the knife. “You in?”

“Not sure I’ll be able to take you in just a month,” Ayane said as she sat up and accepted the offered knife. “But...yeah, I’m in.”

Shizuka’s smile grew warmer as she watched the pair exchange contact information. They’d lost the match, but perhaps gained something much more valuable.

“I wouldn’t mind a second chance against you either.” Kana admitted when Shizuka got to her feet. “Without my sister to interrupt this time.”

Shizuka nodded in acceptance. “It would be my pleasure.”

The teacher and student made their way offstage to where Keiko and Haruko were waiting.

“Sorry we lost before you could fight again.” Ayane said.

“Nah, I didn’t think we’d make it much further than this as a bunch of rookies. Three rounds is pretty good.” Haruko gave her cousin a cheeky grin. “Besides, looks like you earned yourself a rival.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone defeat you.” Keiko murmured to Shizuka as she gave her Fubuki a hug. “Are you alright?”

“I’m quite fine, Cinnamon.” Shizuka replied to her master. “It seems I too have some growing to do.”

Indeed, she thought, she’d started to become a big fish in a small pond before they’d met the Koureis. Even if she was worried about some of the ways they’d begun to expand her horizons, she was steadily becoming convinced that it was worth it.


	24. Student, Teacher, Master

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin January 2019.

The girls stuck around to watch the rest of the tournament round before making their way home. Despite the loss, the mood among the five was one of good cheer, at least until they made it back and the inevitable question had to be raised.

“Will we be heading home tonight, master?” Shizuka asked as Keiko returned to her body. Keiko knew her ninja well enough to detect the hesitance in her voice at even asking. She knew that they had lost their original excuse to stay the full eight days, but within just a few days, the thought of leaving had become decidedly unappealing to both of them.

“I suppose...it depends on whether our hosts would like to continue to have us.” she said after a moment’s consideration, looking over at Sayuri, Haruko, and Ayane. Ayane was the most visibly crestfallen at the thought of them leaving, but it was clear from their expressions that Haruko and Sayuri had both forgotten that they might have to go as well.

Haruko looked to Sayuri. “I don’t have any problem with it, but you’re the head of the house, sis. Your call.”

“Of course they can stay.” Sayuri said without hesitation. “Even if we’re not in the tournament anymore, we can always go and watch if we want.”

Keiko bowed her head in gratitude. “Thank you.”

“C’mon, Shizuka.” Haruko gestured invitingly to the Fubuki as she picked up Ayane’s empty doll. “Let’s get you both fixed up.”

<><><>

It was late by the time Shizuka had fully recuperated from her injuries. She was quietly impressed with Haruko’s miniature factory: while the tools she had at home was capable of making minor repairs, for something serious she would usually need to go to a repair shop. She supposed that masterless girls were much more accustomed to making repairs themselves.

Once she was satisfied that everything was back in working order, Shizuka made her way out of the workroom and towards her master’s bedroom. Being away from Keiko always made her nervous even when she knew she had no reason to be: she trusted the girls to make sure her master was safely taken to bed.

What she didn’t expect was that Keiko wasn’t alone. Ayane was in bed with her as well, both girls nude and engaged in a hungry makeout session. Shizuka’s eyes went wide: she’d known the pair of human girls were getting close, but she hadn’t realized they were already having sex. Part of her was almost relieved, though, in a strange way. She’d never seriously entertained the possibility of her master having a lover. The only sex Keiko had enjoyed so far had been with Shizuka herself, never with another human. Shizuka would have worried endlessly about it if her master had gotten a boyfriend or girlfriend, someone who could excite her without warning. A part of her she didn’t like to acknowledge also feared the possibility of such a person replacing her as Keiko’s guardian, even if only a little. The thought of it being Ayane who had Keiko’s heart, though, of it being someone who Shizuka herself had already started to love as a student...somehow that soothed her fears.

Frozen with shock and the strain of processing her own complicated emotions, Shizuka watched as Ayane’s hands roamed up and down her master’s body, tracing the contours of her delicate figure, while Keiko did the same for Ayane’s athletic frame.

“I’m going to switch.” Keiko said with a breathy gasp as they broke off their kiss. It was now that Shizuka noticed both girls were wearing their headbands. The human girl’s body passed out as Ayane carefully rolled Keiko off to one side, laying her out on her back. Just as she finished, Ayane gasped as Keiko pounced on her pussy in her robot form, sucking Ayane’s clit into her mouth without a moment’s hesitation.

“Aah! K-Keiko!” Ayane yelped, trying her best to keep her voice down despite the sudden stimulation. Keiko’s response was muffled at first, but she let go with her lips after a few seconds to treat Ayane’s clit to stimulation from her tiny hands instead.

“You must be feeling so sore after today.” Keiko purred. “Let me make you all better, master~”

Shizuka’s eyes grew wider still at hearing the word slip from her master’s lips, even as Ayane shuddered in pleasure from Keiko’s attentions. The Archer opted to switch from her hands to her breasts, seeing if she could take advantage of her large endowments for her tiny size to titfuck Ayane’s clit. Even though it was about the right thickness, the sensitive nub was much too short to do such a thing properly, to Keiko’s disappointment. Still, she could grind her soft synthetic tits against it just fine.

“You like this, _master_ ~?” Keiko asked, putting extra emphasis on the word that was an absolutely filthy thrill for both of them to say. She slipped one hand lower, easily sinking it into Ayane’s pussy up to the wrist and working her tiny fingers around inside the slippery pink passage. The other stroked one of Ayane’s lean, well-toned thighs admiringly, her small size letting her feel every little contour of the athletic teenager’s muscles.

“Y-Yes!” Ayane gasped, clenching the bedsheets beneath her.

“Good. Master’s pleasure is mine, after all~” Keiko said, continuing to tease and tend to Ayane’s pussy with all the energy her tiny form allowed her to fully express. “Of course...”

Shizuka realized a moment too late that in her shock, she had forgotten to hide. Keiko looked her way with an inviting, sensual smirk.

“I think it would be much easier to give master the pleasure she deserves if her sensei were to join us~”

“Eh?” Ayane sat up and looked at the door. Her eyes met Shizuka’s and promptly widened in shock and embarrassment. “S-Shizuka! I can-”

“Don’t worry, Ayane.” Keiko said before she slipped out of her dive and sat up in her real body next to Ayane. She beckoned to Shizuka with a hand before curling it into a position to offer a perch. “Come here, Shizuka.”

Even while she was processing the shock of what she’d stumbled upon, Shizuka reflexively obeyed her master’s command and jumped up to alight on her waiting hand.

“I had no intention of hiding this from you for long.” Keiko said to her Fubuki with a loving smile. “With how busy we’ve been, I simply hadn’t found the right time to talk to you about it yet.” She turned her loving gaze towards Ayane. “It’s alright if she joins us, isn’t it?”

Ayane blushed, but perhaps not as much as she might have a few days prior. “I, uh, y-yeah...if she wants to...?”

“I...” Shizuka hadn’t even thought about it. Last night’s instructions from Sayuri had been the first time she’d had sex with anyone but her master, or even thought about it. The thought of doing it with her own student felt dirty, but also somehow intriguing. She paused a moment, then bowed her head in submission. “If you will have me.”

“Then let’s get back to it.” Keiko said cheerfully. She put Shizuka down on the bed before lying back down and switching back to her doll body. “Now then, where were we~?”

Shizuka gasped as Keiko pounced on her and began caressing her servant, giving Ayane a show of the Fubuki’s slender curves under her bodysuit.

“I’ve always wanted to be able to do something like this~” Keiko purred, squishing her newly-massive breasts up against Shizuka’s back while she played with the ninja’s much smaller pair. Shizuka moaned and squirmed: even without the ability to orgasm that her brief taste of a shell had introduced her to, she was capable of feeling pleasure from such intimate touches. It was more than that, though: it was her master’s hands fondling her breasts, not in the way she’d sometimes caressed them with a giant fingertip but with hands the same size as Shizuka’s own. The fact that Ayane was watching, was starting to rub her own breasts as she watched, felt shameful and yet wonderful.

Keiko kept one hand at Shizuka’s chest while the other slid lower, running along the contours of the ninja’s midriff. Shizuka was so enraptured with the sensation that she didn’t notice where Keiko’s hand was traveling until she felt one of her master’s fingers trace a circle along the rim of her charging port. Shizuka let out a birdsong-like cry as the pleasure of the port stimulation wracked her body.

“M-Master~!”

“Such a shame we can’t cum,” Keiko mused, “this would be _perfect_ for edging~” She swept her finger back and forth along the port, eliciting moan after songbird moan from Shizuka with each jolt. Ayane watched with visible amazement, having never seen this side of her mentor before.

Eventually Keiko stopped teasing Shizuka’s charging port and gave her Fubuki a loving kiss on the cheek. “Time to give your student more than just a show, Shizuka. Let’s have you treat her breast just like you treat mine.”

Shizuka obediently followed Keiko as they made their way up to Ayane’s chest. It shouldn’t have been surprising that her student was so talented, Shizuka thought to herself as her hands and feet brushed over the contours of Ayane’s abs: these were the muscles of a warrior. Both girls clamped their lips around one of Ayane’s nipples and began to suck, the tiny pink buds filling their tiny mouths.

“Aah~!” Ayane cried out, her eyes going wide at the new sensation. “Keiko, s-sensei, that’s-!”

Keiko’s response was muffled by the act of fellatio she was performing on Ayane’s nipple, but Shizuka could see from her master’s expression that she was thoroughly delighted. Following Keiko’s order, Shizuka didn’t simply suck for long. Instead she began to circle her student’s areola with her tongue, her small size letting her precisely lick the very edge of the pink. Keiko followed suit with Ayane’s other breast, enjoying the chance to be on the giving end of what she’d only received in the past. Ayane arched her back as she let out a shuddering gasp. There wasn’t much jiggle to her rather modest chest no matter how much she squirmed, but that just made it easier for the tiny girls to maintain their perch.

“Will that be all, _master_ ,” Keiko purred as she heard their attentions bring Ayane to orgasm, “or do you desire more stimulation further down?” She smiled playfully at Ayane, moving up a bit to grind her breasts against the bigger girl’s nipple. “I’ve never had Shizuka touch my ass before, you know. You could be her first~”

“Ah?” Shizuka stopped licking Ayane’s other nipple and looked over at her master, a fresh blush coming on at the dirty suggestion. Ayane herself looked embarrassed to have it brought up, which only prompted Keiko to give both girls a decidedly foxlike smirk.

“Come on, then.” Keiko slid off Ayane’s body, gesturing for Shizuka to do the same. Ayane lifted her legs at the implied command, casually hooking them up over her head with the ease only a trained gymnast could bring to bear. Keiko licked her lips at the display of superb flexibility, and Shizuka couldn’t help but be a little impressed as well. Ayane put her arms around her ankles to support herself comfortably in the position, so that her tightly muscled ass and tight anal star were exposed to the pair of tiny robot girls. She’d already cleaned herself thoroughly before they’d started: at this point, doing so was basically a habit to her.

Keiko hopped over to the bedside table to fetch a small bottle of lube that Ayane had brought downstairs with her while Shizuka examined her student’s backdoor in more detail. It was her first time looking at one up close, but it was evident that Ayane’s was very well cared for. Keiko soon returned, the bottle tucked under one arm.

“For this hole, you need to prepare it properly.” Keiko explained to her servant as she took the cap off and started applying the lubricant. The cool fluid touching her sensitive anal rim made Ayane let out a soft gasp, followed by a louder one when Keiko slipped one of her tiny fingers inside. The size difference meant even burying her finger all the way to the palm meant it barely cleared the entrance, meaning when she twitched and worked her finger around it was a sensation focused purely on that part of Ayane’s ass. Shizuka watched with some fascination as Keiko started working her student’s hole with first one and then two tiny fingers, showing Shizuka everything she’d learned in the past three nights about how to make Ayane yelp and moan by teasing her ass.

“Now you try.” Keiko said when she withdrew her finger and backed off to give Shizuka access. Shizuka moved in at the command and carefully pushed her own finger into Ayane’s tailhole. It was very tight, she found, much tighter than the feminine hole just above it: it wasn’t originally meant as a pleasure point, after all. She could feel the powerful muscles on all sides clenching down reflexively, massaging her finger in a way that was decidedly distinct from when she’d attended to Keiko’s pussy.

Keiko giggled excitedly at the view of Shizuka fingering Ayane’s ass, and the gasping cries that issued from the human girl with every motion of her hand. Keiko teased her own charging port a few times with the hand she hadn’t just coated in lube, letting out excited yelps of her own every time she did so. They were bubbly, eager sounds of a kind Shizuka had never heard her master make before, her new body letting her express the energy she’d watched Keiko keep bottled up all her life. She’d never truly thought of what would happen should her master find a lover, but this was more than she could have ever dreamed of.

Eventually Keiko moved back in, wrapping her lips around Ayane’s clit a second time. Again she only spent a few seconds sucking on the sensitive nub, but this time it was so she could draw Shizuka in next to her with an arm thrown around the Fubuki’s shoulder.

“Ah?” Shizuka’s took pause at the sudden action. “Master?”

“Let’s try something new, Shizuka~”

Keiko drew Shizuka in for a kiss, causing Shizuka’s eyes to go wide as she discovered just how hungry and energetic her master could now truly be. Her tongue invaded Shizuka’s mouth, lashing about dominatingly inside her. Shizuka practically melted against her, shocked by the sudden display of boldness.

The kiss lasted just long enough to firmly establish who was in charge. At Keiko’s prompting, both girls began to lick at Ayane’s clit together, while Shizuka’s fingers stayed buried in her student’s backdoor. They made out around the nub, both of them getting smeared in Ayane’s nectar and neither caring. The combined taste of Ayane’s pussy and Keiko’s lips was absolutely heavenly to Shizuka, so heavenly that she couldn’t bring herself to care how filthy what they were doing was in every sense of the word. The combined attention was more than enough to make Ayane cum again, and cum loudly: she too had lost all sense of propriety in the heat of the moment.

“Mmmm~” Keiko drew Shizuka away from Ayane’s pussy, the pair tumbling down onto their sides to continue making out while Ayane savored the orgasm. Keiko’s expression when their lips finally pulled apart was nothing short of voracious. “My turn~”

The Archer’s doll body closed her eyes and went limp as she returned to her human self. Keiko rolled partway onto her side, looking expectantly at Ayane and Shizuka.

“Ha...come, Ayane.” Shizuka said with a smile that was equal parts embarrassed and excited. “It’s time I taught you how to attend to our master properly.”

She’d looked up at Ayane’s human self to say the words, only to find that Ayane had already gone into a dive. Her ninja self leapt to Shizuka’s side in the blink of an eye, and her eager response made Shizuka’s circuits flutter.

“Yes, sensei!”


	25. Fragility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published to Pastebin May 2019.
> 
> This is the last of the previously published chapters. Anything after this is new.

Ayane made sure to return to her own room before bed. The reality of what she'd done didn't really hit her until she was back behind the safety of her own bedroom door, and when it did it was enough that she found herself leaning against the door for support, her whole body trembling.

She'd had sex with Shizuka - her and Keiko both at the same time, even - and not a single part of her had objected at the time. No, she’d gotten totally into it, all thoughts of embarrassment or shame completely driven from her mind by Keiko’s effortless dominance. It was disturbing how well they'd clicked, while knowing barely anything about each other. Part of her hungered to dive headlong into this relationship, but she was frightened that sex was all there was between them. Ayane wanted more than that. She wanted, well, a real girlfriend.

She wasn’t going to be able to sort it out while her pulse was pounding like this, she decided. It was a bit difficult for sleep to claim her, but she ultimately managed it. By the time she was done with her morning exercises the next day, everyone else had also roused. Shizuka was looking a bit nervous, but Keiko looked as happy as could be.

“So, what shall we do today?” Keiko asked over breakfast.

“I picked up some swimsuits for me and Sayuri day before yesterday.” Haruko said, giving the other girls a grin. “Wanna take a train down to Okinawa and hit up the beach? We could book a hotel, make an overnight trip of it.”

“It’s an interesting proposition,” Keiko admitted, “but I didn’t pack a swimsuit. Though Ayane and I could always go shopping today, and we can leave tonight?”

“Ah?” Ayane blushed a bit at the suggestion. “Uh, yeah, sure.” Perhaps, part of her thought, this was a chance to soothe her fears.

<><><>

Ayane was flushed with nervousness as the pair of girls made their way to the mall for what was, if she was honest with herself, their first date. She’d had sex with Keiko three nights in a row now, but they hadn’t spent much time yet getting to know each other outside of that and their new shared secret. For all she knew, they weren’t compatible at all. It was hard to feel like they weren’t, though, when just having Keiko’s arm draped around her waist as they walked made her pulse quicken. Shizuka had come along, but was following at a distance at Keiko’s request.

“So, ah, where to first?” Ayane asked once they arrived at the mall.

“Let’s take care of business first,” Keiko replied, “but after that, perhaps we could visit the bookstore? Do you like reading manga?”

“Y-yeah, I do.” Ayane admitted. “Mostly shounen stuff, though. I don’t know if you like that kind of thing...?”

“I do, in fact.” Keiko said with a smile that made Ayane’s heart flutter. “I read shoujo more often, but perhaps you could make some recommendations. We’ll need some reading material for the train, after all.”

Ayane fought off the reflex to head straight for the arena when they arrived. It was already a reflex, she thought to herself, even though it had only been a week since she'd started battling. It was a little scary how quickly all this was becoming natural to her.

They started off by browsing the various clothing retailers, examining their swimsuit options. 

“You need a two-piece.” Keiko insisted, pulling some choice selections off the shelves. “Hiding abs like yours would be a crime.”

Ayane blushed a bit at the praise. It wasn't the first time that someone had complimented her on her athleticism, but hearing it from Keiko felt different. In her nervousness, it took her some time to remember she needed to return the favor.

“Um, how about this one for you?” she offered as she pulled a white one-piece off the shelf. Keiko giggled at the suggestion.

“You know what happens when white clothes get wet, don’t you?” An impish smile formed on Keiko’s lips as she leaned in a bit. “Or is that what you were hoping for?”

“Erk-!” Ayane backed away, her cheeks burning red. The reaction prompted another giggle from Keiko.

“Relax, Ayane.” Keiko gently plucked the white swimsuit from Ayane's hands, as well as a black copy of the same swimsuit. “Come on, then, let’s see how well they fit.”

In Ayane’s flustered state, she couldn’t keep it together enough to object when Keiko drew the two of them into the same changing room and began shucking her clothes, smiling flirtatiously at her all the while. 

“Come on, now,” Keiko teased, “hurry up and change.”

“R-Right...” Ayane hurried to obey, fumbling a bit with the straps of the red tankini on top of the pile. It was a simple enough sort, though, and soon both girls were in their swimsuits.

“What do you think...?” Ayane asked nervously as she posed for Keiko. It wasn't a risque swimsuit by any means, but still showed more skin than the ones she was used to wearing. Her eyes roamed across Keiko’s body to help distract herself from the embarrassment of posing. White really did suit her, Ayane thought, the one-piece adding to her princess-like appearance.

“You look wonderful.” Keiko said, looking Ayane up and down with open delight. Her gaze lingered particularly on Ayane's exposed midriff, drinking in the contours of her abs, and as it did her smile turned foxlike in that way it did when they were alone. “Mmm...good enough to eat~”

“Ah, Kei-mmph~!” Ayane found herself pressed up against the side of the stall as Keiko's lips found hers. Her eyes went wide and her body tensed: they couldn’t do this here, she thought to herself, not out in public. But there was that relentless teasing part of herself again, telling her that she wanted this, that Keiko was giving her exactly what she craved and all she had to do was let herself enjoy it. Slowly but surely, her tension began to relax...

But Keiko’s body relaxed as well, and after a moment Ayane realized the kissing had stopped seconds after it began. Their lips parted and Keiko collapsed against her, Ayane reflexively reaching up to support her before she could fall over. Keiko’s eyes had closed and her breathing slowed as if she’d fallen asleep. She hadn’t had a cataplectic attack since their first day together, and Ayane had almost forgotten about the condition.

Ayane carefully laid Keiko down and went for the tiny scroll case Shizuka had entrusted her with, tucked into one of her pockets. Compared to her human size, it was more like a pill, but she still had no trouble unscrewing it and pricking Keiko’s arm with the injector hidden inside. Keiko’s body jerked as she sucked in a breath.

“Are you alright?” Ayane asked. Keiko nodded as she sat up, leaning heavily against Ayane.

“Y-Yes...” Keiko shook her head. “I’m sorry, I...it had been a few days since the last time. I thought I was handling it better.”

With the shock breaking the spell of their raging hormones, Ayane realized just how fragile Keiko’s body felt compared to hers when the other girl leaned against her. She’d always known she was physically stronger, of course, but normally Keiko’s effortless dominance made her feel like putty. She’d forgotten how easily Keiko could break.

“That’s...what you live with?” Ayane asked, supporting Keiko while she steadied her breathing.

Keiko nodded wordlessly, and Ayane began to understand how Shizuka must have felt every day.

Neither girl was in the mood to try on clothes for much longer after that, so they went with their initial selections. Their clothes shopping done, the pair headed for the bookstore. Ayane's arm reflexively went around Keiko's waist as they walked, as if to brace her. Keiko leaned into the hug at first, but a bit of disappointment flickered in her eyes.

The pair browsed the shelves, with Ayane staying close to Keiko throughout. 

“Here, let me get that for you.” Ayane said quickly, crouching down to pluck the book from the shelf. She did the same for one that was particularly high. Keiko’s expression stayed neutral, but each time the flicker in her eyes grew stronger.

Eventually they made their way to the food court, where Ayane laid eyes on an oden stand that looked appetizing. She and Keiko joined the line. Each girl ordered a bowl, and it was there that the growing tension finally came to a head.

“Here, I’ve got it.” Ayane said as the cashier provided them each with a freshly-filled bowl. She reached for Keiko’s, only for the other girl to pull it away.

“No, I’m quite alright.” Keiko said, prompting a worried look from Ayane.

“Are you sure? I can-”

“Ayane!” Keiko snapped. Ayane recoiled at the sudden anger in the other girl's eyes, her own widening in shock. Keiko saw this, and her glare softened into something sadder. “I'm not made of glass. I'm not.”

Ayane looked down, suddenly ashamed. “Keiko, I...”

“I don't need you to be protecting me from everything. I have Shizuka for that. What I need from you is...” She trailed off, then shook her head. “If we're going to be friends, or more than friends, then I want you to...”

“Excuse me, girls,” the cashier said testily, “but there are people in line?

The pair were suddenly aware that they were making a scene. Both girls bowed their heads in embarrassment and uttered apologies before they made their way to a table.

“I'm sorry.” Ayane said as they sat down, keeping her head bowed. Keiko sighed.

“No, some of it’s my fault. I had a good few days in a row, and I...I got carried away.” Keiko shook her head, as Ayane lifted hers. “I’m not physically fragile, Ayane. I’ve just had to hold back for so long that being with you has been...I don't know if there's a better word to describe it than simply intoxicating.”

Keiko reached across the table and took Ayane’s hand in hers.

“You’re the first person Shizuka's ever let me go out with alone. That speaks volumes to just how much she already trusts you. I love her, but I don’t want you to be her.” Keiko gently squeezed Ayane’s hand as the two girls locked eyes. “I want you to be my girlfriend, not my caretaker. Can you do that for me, please?”

Ayane nodded, and squeezed Keiko's hand in return. “Alright. No more treating you like glass, promise.”

The smile that Keiko gave her was heart-melting. “Thank you. I'll be more careful from now on, promise.”

With promises exchanged and the tension broken, the two began to eat with renewed comfort. Keiko reached across the table to pluck an egg from Ayane’s bowl, only to realize by the time she’d withdrawn her hand that Ayane had snatched one of her own. Keiko gave Ayane an amused smile as she noticed.

“That’s my ninja~”

Eventually the pair finished their meal, after which Ayane made her way towards the sporting goods store that stood at the far end of the mall. It was one of the few stores that rivaled the arena for size, laden with racks of equipment for biking, fishing, and all manner of athletics.

“My, there’s quite the selection.” Keiko mused as they entered. “Anything in particular that you’re looking for?”

“Travel gear.” Ayane said. “Weight bands, stuff we can use at the hotel.”

“We?” Keiko asked with a raised eyebrow that made Ayane blush.

“I was...well, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to start joining me for my morning workouts?”

“Oh...?” Keiko considered this proposal, then nodded. “Yes, I’d like to try that.”

Together the girls picked out some portable equipment, small enough to fit in a suitcase and light enough for Keiko’s untrained frame. She might not have been made of glass, but she was still much weaker than the athletic Ayane, and would need to build herself up slowly.

Now properly laden with supplies, the pair prepared for their trip home. As they walked by the arena entrance, Ayane’s gaze couldn’t help but linger. She thought it was for just a moment, but then she felt Keiko’s hand on her shoulder.

“You want to go check on your rivals, right?”

“Ah? W-well...”

Keiko gave her lover a warm smile. “It’s okay. Let’s just take a peek.”

The arena was as bustling as it had been the day before, with the tournament still going strong. Most of the day’s matches had already taken place while they were on their date, the records scrolling across the arena’s display boards. Ayane started looking for the results for the pair of Jinrais they’d fought the day before, but Keiko’s sharp eyes spotted something more interesting yet.

“Over there, Ayane.” Keiko tugged at Ayane’s sleeve and pointed towards the holosseum entrance, where Ikari and Kana could be seen resting on one side of the countertop. Both looked pretty badly beaten up, looking over their damaged equipment packs and making some repairs. Ayane supposed they were the only two members of their team, so they had to fight every day. Their match had been early, and according to the scoreboard they’d won it, so they’d probably been sitting there for at least a few hours. Before she even realized what she was doing, she’d approached them.

“You two alright?” she asked the pair of Jinrai sisters, who were startled at being spoken to that they almost fell off the counter.

Ikari was the first of the two to recover enough composure to speak. “Eh? Um, we’re fine! Just, y’know, just waiting for our master, ehe~”

“Do we know you?” Kana asked. Even compared to the quiet chill she’d spoken with yesterday, the suspicion in her voice was audible. Ayane quickly shook her head.

“No, no, you look like you’ve been there a while, that’s all. We’re heading home west, if you need a lift.”

The twins looked at each other, exchanging a conversation made up entirely of glances and rapid-fire gestures as the humans looked on. At the end of it, Kana sighed.

“We’d appreciate it, yes.” The indigo-haired ninja strapped her wingpack back on and hovered up to alight on Keiko’s bags, while Ikari slung the folded-up pack containing her extra arms over her shoulder and hopped up onto Ayane’s waiting perch.

“Thanks, miss...?” Ikari trailed off as she looked up.

“Ayane. This is Keiko.”

“Thanks, then, Ayane.” the blonde Jinrai replied. “I’m Ikari. This is my sister, Kana.” The fiery energy she’d had in her voice the day before was still present, but dulled by exhaustion. Her battery must have been running low on top of the damage she’d taken, Ayane thought.

“Nice to meet you, Ikari.” she said, trying her best to make it sound like it was the first time. Keiko had noticed their exhaustion as well, and with a glance she drew Ayane’s attention towards a vending machine for jellycans. The tiny beverages were cheap, and Ayane passed one to each Jinrai. “Here. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“We can’t-” Ikari started to object, but Kana shot her a look that made her stop her objection and take the jellycan. “Um, th-thanks.” While embarrassed, she gulped down the can with the ravenous need of someone who hadn’t eaten in days. Kana sipped more slowly at the can she’d been provided as Ayane and Keiko left the mall with their new passengers, heading down the street.

“Where do you live?” Keiko asked, letting Kana have the perch that Shizuka usually occupied. Kana provided an address that wasn’t a long detour, along the route Ayane had walked to school as a student. She wasn’t deeply familiar with the particular house that they stopped at, though, whose lights were out with no sign of anybody home. The Jinrais were mostly silent through the trip, with Ayane unsure how to start a conversation with them that didn’t reveal her other identity, and hopped off when they got to the front yard.

“We can take it from here.” Ikari said, looking more pepped up after the jellycan. “Thanks again!”

“Safe travels.” Kana murmured. Ayane glanced back as she and Keiko walked away, but by the time she did, the ninjas had vanished from sight.

“Hey, Keiko, do you think those two were...?” She didn’t want to say the word masterless out loud in public, even if they were the only ones on the street.

“Mmm...one conversation wasn’t enough to say for sure,” Keiko replied, “but they certainly had that air, didn’t they? If they are, though, then what do you want to do?”

The query gave Ayane pause. “I...well, I don’t know yet. Let’s talk about it when we get home, alright?”

Ayane wasn’t sure about a lot of things yet, if she was honest with herself. Her world had been turned upside-down in the past few months, and she was playing so many of her days by ear that her future was still a total mystery. She didn’t even know for sure if she was still going to university at the end of the summer, or what she would do if she didn’t. Still, one thing had become clear today, she thought to herself as she wrapped an arm around Keiko’s shoulder, giving her a short hug that was loving rather than protective. Whatever the future had in store for her, she was going to face it together with her cousins, her sensei, and her girlfriend.


End file.
